Express & Star

Dean Saunders spells out reality of Wolves' peril

Manager Dean Saunders today spelled out the grim reality of Wolves' peril when he admitted they could win both their last games and still go down.

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The Championship relegation battle is on a knife-edge with nine teams involved in the scrap to stay up and two games left.

Third-from-bottom Wolves host one of them – Burnley – in their final home match of the season.

And Wolves know that, realistically, they must win on Saturday to carry their survival hopes to Brighton on the final day.

Wolves are on 51 points, as are Barnsley below them and Peterborough above.

That tally would have kept them up in all but three of the 24 years in which the second tier has been a 46-game season.

But Saunders admitted the battle could prove fruitless no matter how well they do in their last two matches.

He said: "If we win the next two games, we'll be in title-winning form – it will be seven wins out of 11. We could win the last two games, though, and still be in the bottom three.

"But if you said to me: 'Can we win two games?' I'd say yes, and we might not have to.

"The best scenario is to win on Saturday and go to Brighton and a couple of teams would have to win 4-0 to go above us and we'd have to lose to go down.

"But we knew it would come down to this sort of scenario at the end – even if we have to win both.

"I was hoping it wouldn't. But I think we need at least a point on Saturday."

Asked if Saturday's game was bigger than 'Survival Sunday' two years ago, Saunders was non-committal.

He said: "It was a big thing to drop out of the Premier League. It's hard to get back into it out of this league.

"If you look at the difference between us and Hull in second place, it's seven points less than Liverpool are behind Manchester United – and Liverpool are seventh.

"So from top to bottom, there isn't a lot of difference in this league."

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