Just two of our players will be involved with England as they take on Italy in Rome on Sunday, and with the return of the Saxons squad to their clubs this week, no excuses can be made on the call-up front. Injuries are a different matter – not a week seems to go by without another member of the squad dropping from a strained this or a snapped that – but what strength Wasps have available outside the medical rooms at Acton will largely be deployable onto the Adams Park pitch come the weekend.

Whether they will all have their minds fully on the task in hand – beating Sale – is another question. Uncertainty over contracts seems to have dragged on well beyond its use by date this season, and the daily dispatches in the newspapers, if they bear any kind of truth in them at all, suggest a squad in which a number of high profile players see their rugby interests best served away from Wasps. For we fans, who know little of the internal contract machinations that take place at this time of year, it is a worrying period. It's not so much the revelation that players – employees – are less inclined to support the club wholeheartedly than we are (anybody who had any lingering suspicions on this score would surely have had them dashed last year), it's more the idea that they feel their priorities – money, representative honours, lifestyle – can all be met, and met more thoroughly, elsewhere. Granted, Wasps aren't the richest club in the land, and suburban London and High Wycombe aren't exactly comparable with the south of France, but still. Players have been attracted to our club in the past because we had a reputation for improving them, for getting them into a position where they can challenge for representative honours. If players now feel that they can get the same thing elsewhere, together with more money or a more rewarding lifestyle, then the future doesn't bode well.

All of which sounds a tad pessimistic, perhaps. After all, last year's recruitment indicated that Wasps still have something to offer, and the risible sight of one newspaper loudly proclaiming that a certain player is on his way to such and such a club, only to retract with equal self-confidence a few days later, suggests that those doing the reporting have as little idea what's going on behind the scenes as we who read their columns. Players will move – we know that. No club is immune from even big names deciding that they'd like to ply their trade somewhere else. The key is filling the gaps – being an attractive enough proposition to be able to fill the gaps – and we won't know how well that's turned out until some time around Christmas next season. So why worry?

Our visitors this week have had quite a large squad turnover themselves in recent years. Only a week or so ago it was announced that their captain, veteran second-rower Dean Schofield, is leaving to join ex-Director of Rugby Philippe St Andre's Toulon at the end of the season. Added to that, England capped scrum-half Richard Wigglesworth will be departing for Saracens for 2010/11. On the other hand, a player like Dwayne Peel, rumoured to be hankering after a return to Welsh regional rugby, has signed a new two-year deal with with the Stockport club. Things can't be all bad. Wasps fans, like those at Sale, just have to get used to the sight of players moving on, and not assuming that every departure is a sign of something irretrievably rotten.

This will be our first match against Sale this season. The aborted match at Edgeley Park in November has been written about enough, so I won't go into that, but suffice it to say that even if that match had gone ahead, this return fixture would still be a pivotal match for both clubs. Currently separated by nine points and three places in the GP table (although Sale have a match in hand) this game will set the tone for the run in to the end of the season. Wasps still have a chance of making the top four (though much will depend on slip ups from those above us and the timely return of some of our more critical injured players). Sale are still gunning for a top six place, and Heineken Cup qualification next season. On the evidence of our matches against Leeds and Newcastle, none of the teams just below Wasps in the table will be giving up thoughts of overhauling us, or of beating us at Adams Park. If Sale were to do so this weekend, it would be difficult to see how Wasps could recover. Winning at home is the bread and butter of Guinness Premiership competition – we have to start doing it and doing it well. If we can't then it might not only be play-off places that slip out of our grasp.

What with the chopping and changing of competitions, form lines going into this match are difficult to place any emphasis on. Sale have lost their last four matches, but two of those were in the LV= Cup and the other two in the Heineken Cup against Cardiff and Toulouse. The latter of those, the home game against Toulouse, was a match Sale could have won – they certainly weren't outplayed by the French team. Wasps have two wins and two losses from their last four, but again, two of those games were in the LV= Cup. Discounting the victory against Roma, the most significant recent display was probably that against Racing Metro in the Challenge Cup. A narrow loss it might have been, but the attacking intent (and some of the execution) shown in that match should form the base on which the club builds the rest of the season. The game against the Scarlets certainly indicated that that is the direction we are trying to move.

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