Sheffield United v Arsenal: Chris Wilder admires Gunners, but his Blades cannot fear them

"Boring, boring Arsenal" have transformed into one of English football's most watchable sides, first under Arsene Wenger and now in a second wind led by Mikel Arteta.

It is pretty successful too, which is why plenty of neutrals will switching on Monday's televised game at Bramall Lane to see if the Gunners can stay on the coat-tails of Manchester City and Liverpool in an absorbing Premier League title race.

But when it comes to talking about how much he enjoys watching Arsenal play, Wilder has a balance to strike. Their talents are well known but the Blades boss cannot talk them up as supermen.

It would be easy but hugely damaging for the side bottom of the Premier League to approach the game with an inferiority complex.

Having seen how close Nottingham Forest pushed Liverpool on Saturday, Wilder wants his side to go one further. Their only chance of avoiding a seemingly inevitable relegation is to pull more than one rabbit out of the hat.

"I enjoy watching Arsenal," says Wilder, whose sides Premier League victory over Unai Emery's Gunners in October 2019 was a gear shift in a great season. "I hope I don't enjoy watching them on Monday night, I hope it's a really difficult game for them and we take them to the limits, like we did Liverpool.

"When I do go and watch football I like watching Arsenal, they're a really positive, front-foot side with a lot of technical players and they play the game in the right way.

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"But we want to make that as difficult as possible so when they get back on the bus if they get a result they've had to do a lot of things right to get that result."

Even if the points go to north London, there are still individual causes to be pushed. Goalkeeper Aaron Ramsdale earnt a move to Ashburton Grove on the back of his performances in Sheffield United's last relegation season. Never mind lofty ambitions like that, some of Wilder's squad have a job just to stay where they are with plenty a contract ticking into its final few months.

"There's a couple of the boys – the (James) McAtees and Cameron Archers of this world (who had played Premier League football before joining) – but the majority have had to work their way up," Wilder says of his squad.

"If they didn't want to play in the Premier League they could have turned it in with five games to go last season and you'd be in the Championship. But they didn't, the club deservedly earned the right to play in the Premier League.

"We are all frustrated and disappointed in terms of the league position and the points total we've got (13 from 26 games).

"We're trying to focus on the next game but this is where you want to be, to pit yourselves against the likes of Arsenal.

"For all the hard work that everyone puts in, on and off the pitch, to be a fixture in the Premier League against Arsenal, these are the things I've talked about before in the past we want to be a regular occasion.

"Unfortunately it's been a bit flip-flopped over the last two or three years but these are the fixtures you want on a regular basis and when you do have them, you want to get the most out of them."

Over-confidence could be even more catastrophic.

"We have to get the balance right in terms of what we do from a defensive structure to what we have to do with the ball as well," cautions Wilder, Arsenal's 15 goals in their last three league games and his own side's 15 shipped in the previous three Bramall Lane encounters no doubt weighing heavily on his mind this last week.

"It can't just be 100 per cent we need to do this, we need to do that, we've got to get the balance right. They understand they're up against good players, they see it every time it's on the box and every time these boys are playing live, which seems to be every three days.

"They know the players' they're up against so you can't really kid them to tell them these are a bang average team and we should be running over the top of them.

"There's no hiding place, really.

"We'll have to do an incredible amount of good things on the night and as everybody says, Arsenal might have to have an off night and we might have to have a great night but these things happen.

"If Arsenal say yes and we say yes, we understand we're on the back foot in terms of getting a result. But if we can put in a really good performance and a competitive one, who knows? We have to believe our night and do everything to make that happen."