IT was the game that should have seen Wanderers' test Fulham's Championship credentials.

Two weeks ago Sam Allardyce was looking at a home run that would have turned tomorrow's top of the table clash into a decisive six-pointer.

The pressure would have been on Jean Tigana's men and the bookies, who hastily paid out on the title going to Craven Cottage, would have been sweating.

Now, three Reebok games later, just two points in the bag and badly wounded by a hefty derby defeat, Allardyce admits the pressure is on Wanderers to make sure they don't lose even more ground in the race for the Premiership.

"We could have made the game a lot more interesting from our own point of view," the manager freely admits. "They (Fulham) have had a bad spell and we've hit a dodgy spell. If we hadn't done that we could have been a lot closer to Fulham and still had a cushion against Blackburn and Birmingham.

"But it's not to be. We should have been asserting pressure on Fulham and not worrying about what Blackburn and Birmingham are doing but that's heaping the pressure on us now.

"It's a great shame after how hard we've worked and where we've got to but we can't feel sorry for ourselves.

"We've put pressure on ourselves by only drawing with Huddersfield and Grimsby and losing to Blackburn. We've got to put it to rights starting tomorrow."

Allardyce, who has seen his team win just once - 2-1 at Portsmouth - since he picked up the Nationwide Manager of the Month award for January, has seen his players recover well from previous setbacks this season but he knows it won't be easy for them to bounce back after suffering such a heavy defeat at the hands of their closest rivals - mathematically as well as geographically. But he accepts they must restore their self-confidence if they are to regain the momentum that so recently had them marked down as serious title contenders.

"People might say there's no difference between losing 2-1 and 4-1 but there is from a confidence point of view," he readily concedes. "That's a thrashing ... at home in a local derby

"But we've thrown the tape away and put the whole business behind us. Now, as far as we are concerned, that was a one-off."

Fulham tomorrow, Blackburn again in an FA Cup replay on Wednesday night, with either a tension-packed League game at home to Gillingham or a crack at mighty Arsenal to follow ... the next seven days could change the course of their entire season!

"It's a difficult period," Allardyce readily acknowledges. "In fact the next three weeks or so is a huge period for us as far as our destiny is concerned.

"This is a big weekend for all the teams up there - that's why we are determined to keep our fantastic away run going tomorrow.

"If we come away with a win it just turns our season completely round in our favour again."

Allardyce no longer talks about closing the gap on Fulham (it's now 12 points when he'd hoped it might have been cut to just five) being more concerned with keeping Blackburn and Birmingham at bay.

He had hoped Wanderers would have turned the Premiership stakes into a two-horse race by now but that's not to be.

Now, with the pressure on, he's thrown down the gauntlet to his players and asked them to show their character.

"It's all about bottle and results now," he says. "It's about holding your nerve."