SAM Allardyce offered Wanderers a 10-year guarantee as he set his players a Champions League challenge.

The Whites boss believes a place in Europe's premier club competition next season is both a realistic target and a means of securing a decade of Premiership prosperity.

An instant £10 million windfall would, he predicts, banish relegation fears for the foreseeable future.

He admits it would be a "dream come true" if he were to lead Wanderers to a top four finish, but he is in such an upbeat mood ahead of Saturday's showdown with Liverpool, that he no longer sees the UEFA Cup as the extent of his ambition.

"I'll go for the big prize," he said without hesitation. "It's worth £5m to £10m, even more, and that would be so important to this club.

"Finishing in a Champions League spot could secure this club a future in the Premiership for the next 10 years. That's why we've got to go for it."

Such is his confidence in the structure of the club he joined five and a half yars ago that Allardyce has no fears that they would over-stretch themselves, as Leeds United did when their Champions League dreams led to financial meltdown and relegation from the Premiership.

"We wouldn't do it the Leeds way," he said. "We would use our money and spend it wisely.

"We would have no illusions about the Champions League. We would enjoy it and we would take the money that it brings. But we would do the usual equations in terms of my squad and plan for one thing, first and forermost, to make sure we are right in the Premiership.

"What it would do is stop the chairman and the owner saying they haven't got any money to spend. It would put them under pressure to release the funds and not let them get swallowed up elsewhere."

Victory over an injury and suspension-hit Liverpool Saturday would see Wanderers leapfrog the Mersey Reds into fifth place in the Premiership and move within two points of fourth-placed Everton, who travel to West Brom on Sunday.

Allardyce, whose only absentee is the suspended El-Hadji Diouf after Stelios and Tal Ben Haim returned unscathed from midweek international duty, knows Wanderers are the form team of the three, having won seven of their last nine Premiersghip games. And, although he is reluctant to put undue pressure on his players, he draws encouragement from previous seasons when they have proved strong finishers.

"We can't predict 100 per cent but we've always been very good in the last eight games and, if we can do that again, we will give ourselves a really good chance of achieving that ultimate dream," he said.

"We are going head to head with Liverpool and, if you'd told me at the start of the season that we'd be in this position going into the last eight games, I might have said you were mad.

"But here we are and deservedly so. Now we mustn't let the season die. We can't fail now.

"We've got to push on and make sure we secure what we are aiming for to maintain our position and try to improve on it.

"We aren't looking down now, we're looking to maintain the challenge against ourselves, against Liverpool and ultimately against Everton and that starts by picking up a result at Liverpool Saturday.

"It would be a dream come true to finish in the Champions League but the reality is that it is possible. Our three most difficult games are this one Saturday, Chelsea at home and Everton here at the Reebok on the last day of the season. And if it was between me and Moysie (Everton manager David Moyes) for who finishes fourth, I would be the most delighted manager in the Premiership - whether we did it or we didn't."