Showcase the Championship? Chris Wilder just wants to win as he urges Sheffield United fans to give it to Leeds United's Jayden Bogle

Wilder is hoping Jayden Bogle is given as "tough" an evening as he received at Elland Road in the reverse fixture, and if the hosts get the ugliest victory of all time, he could not care less, so long as they end the night top of the table.

"We're not here to entertain and just to show what brilliant football teams we are, we're here to win," insists Wilder.

"Everybody's right billing this as the outstanding game of the season because of the teams, the situation, the timing, because it's on a Monday night, because of the derby, the connections and the history.

"Ultimately everybody's after the win and our boys are really looking forward to it."

With 12 games to play after Monday's meeting, no result will be decisive for either side, though.

"There's a quarter of a season to go," stresses Wilder. "I was looking at the fixtures the other night, there are some huge challenges ahead and there's 30-odd points to play for.

"I'll be absolutely astounded if any team in our division wins the next 13 games. A point on the road and a win at home, everyone talks about two points a game, we're on course to do that and so are other teams.

"If you were talking about the second, third, fourth-last game of the season then I would understand.

"But there's still an awful lot of football to be played."

Not all Leeds fans are enamoured with the conservative way Daniel Farke runs their team and being one of them does not make Wilder immune from criticism from Blades fans, but both are single-minded in doing what they believe, through experience, is the right thing.

"We want this to be a winning football club," insists Wilder. "We have to do it in a process and a style that matches our culture and identity but I'm not going to change everything we've built since 2016 because it might benefit me, it might please some.

"I could quite easily coach a team that opens everything up and does this and could do that, and forgo results over style. I know the outcome of that, 100 per cent."

Bogle is one of a number of players on either side to have played for both, and as the most recent to go from south to west, and Leeds' best player in 2025, will get a hostile reception from the Bramall Lane terraces. Wilder is all for it.

"I want it to be tough," he says. "It was tough when I walked into Elland Road. I got it, Jayden should get it – in the right way."

Wilder spoke in the second half of last season about Bogle being a player he wanted to rebuild around but when the now-24-year-old expressed an interest in joining Leeds after four years at Sheffield United, he was sold for around £5m.

"I thought it was one of the best bits of business we ever did at Sheffield United, bringing him in," says Wilder of the player signed from Derby County along with Max Lowe, now at Sheffield Wednesday.

"He was outstanding, and he's a great kid. He had an opportunity to go to a top club.

"I don't think we should have sold him if I'm being perfectly honest but that decision was not my decision. Jayden was one of our best players last season and I'd have liked to have built around him.

"But he's moved on and had an outstanding season. I'll shake his hand before, I'll shake his hand after, but in between, he's an opposition player. And it's game on."

Likewise with Farke, with whom Wilder has built a good relationship since infamously calling the German disrespectful for being late to a meeting before their first game.

Few would have guessed after that 2017 match between Wilder's Blades and Farke's Norwich City that the Yorkshireman would be defending his rival over a touchline ban.

Farke received his third booking of the season for running onto the pitch to celebrate Pascal Struijk's winner in the final minute of stoppage time at home to Sunderland on Monday, a decision television pundit Neil Warnock called a "disgrace".

"Initially, it wasn't the easiest of relationships but we quicky got over that and that shows a lot about his character," says Wilder of Farke. "He's a good footballing guy and a top manager who deserved all the plaudits he's getting at the moment.

"He'll be really disappointed (not to be on the touchline on Monday) and I've got to say, if that's the way the game's going, it's just ridiculous.

"I see managers steaming into fourth officials, berating them, getting after them, trying to influence them, begging for everything, then I see managers that are emotional and passionate and have character.

"Dan showed that on Monday night and got punished for it. It's absolutely ridiculous.

"The punishment for three yellow cards is really harsh when you think about the amount of games Dan or myself I have to manage."