FOR a manager who has shielded his players from the distractions and pressures, Colin Todd was surprisingly candid when he cast his mind back through his career as a manager and player and admitted: "I've never known a more important game!"

The Wanderers boss sees no need for the cloak of protection any more since his squad have shown, to a man, that they can handle the tension. So why not tell it like it is?

"It's the most important game I've been involved in because it means survival in the Premiership," he explains. "And that's so important to this club. Everyone knows that."

It's a simple recognition of the facts of the matter as Wanderers prepare for an entire season's work to be judged on the results of 90 minutes of football at Stamford Bridge and Goodison Park tomorrow afternoon.

They won't be places for the faint-hearted but Todd is confident his players can cope - otherwise he'd be doing his best to play down the importance of the occasion.

But they are grown men, after all; they know the score and they've shown already that they can handle the tension.

Three and a half months without a win left them anchored in the relegation zone and facing nine 'cup finals' that would decide their fate. They've won five, drawn one, and the revival bandwagon has gone off the rails just once, when they lost 4-0 at Derby - a drubbing at Derby which Todd could not explain at the time and which has tortured him ever since. He chooses to refer to the Pride Park fiasco as a "one-off" in the context of the recent run, during which he says his players have done him and the club proud.

"They've been under pressure for the last three months," he acknowledged, "but they haven't shown it. They've been relaxed on the park and in the dressing room.

"There's tension, of course there is, but it's how that tension is handled and my players have done that ever so well.

"Come four o'clock tomorrow I know they will be doing everything they can to make sure we survive."

Looking back on the season, Todd can count the 'disasters' on one hand. The Derby game - it goes without saying - and the heavy defeats at Arsenal and Sheffield Wednesday in the first half of the season and the 5-1 hammering at home by Coventry in January, which set the alarm bells ringing.

But it particularly niggles him that they failed to make home advantage count against the likes of Barnsley and Southampton.

"They are the ones I look back on," he says with an obvious sense of irritation. "Six-pointers, here at the Reebok. No disrespect to the opposition but they were games we should have won." Todd admits to feeling the pressures himself more during this relegation campaign than he did when he assumed sole control in the second half of the 95-96 Premiership season and made a brave fight of what was universally accepted as a losing battle.

"The expectations have been greater this time," he explains. "But I've come a long way as a manager since that relegation experience last time.

"It taught me a lot. I learned the importance of making strong decisions and being decisive, whether the decisions were popular ones or not. Like selling Jamie Pollock. He'd played in nearly all the games but when I left him out, he asked me for a move.

"I didn't hang around. Manchester City wanted him so I sold him. The thing that matters is whether the decision is the right one for the club. "Being relegated and bouncing back has certainly made me a better manager but expectations this time were that we would stay in the Premiership. I believed that too.

"Injuries haven't helped and suspensions haven't helped. But I've never used that as an excuse. My belief is that whatever 11 players go out they should be good enough to give us 100 per cent and get us something out of the game.

"And players have blossomed - there's no question about that.

"They've taken it to the wire, which is what we said might happen. I'd rather it had been settled last week here at the Reebok and we'd been in a position to really celebrate. But we're still in there fighting and, as we know, our destiny is now in our own hands.

"We just have to win a game of football." LAST match survival battles are nothing new to Colin Todd.

The Wanderers boss has been there before and come out smiling, as he explains with recollections of 1990 at Middlesbrough - his first taste of management.

"I took over with 13 games to survive in the old Second Division," he recalls. "The last game of the season was at home to Newcastle who were playing for a place in the play-offs.

"We had to win it to avoid relegation to Division Three...and we won it 4-2. I'd be delighted with the same result tomorrow."

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.