One of those clubs is our opponent this weekend – Gloucester. I hesitate to call it yet another crunch match.

In reality, with only seven regular season games to go and a top six position, let alone a top four one, far from guaranteed, every match from now on is crucial. The question no Wasps supporter knows the answer to, even though we're two thirds of the way through the season, is whether Wasps have the wherewithal to hold off the challenge.

The frustration of watching a team that has beaten Leicester, Northampton and Saracens at home fail to do the same to Newcastle and Leeds, and then get well beaten away to the latter, is far greater than the frustration that might attend a simple mediocre season. If we're not good enough we're not good enough, and that's something that's easily digestible. The problem is, we have shown that on our day we are good enough, and therein lies the frustration. Injuries and call ups have played their part, of course they have, but this isn't the first season that we've had those issues to deal with, and in previous seasons we have overcome the handicap – indeed, it has sometimes inspired us. So why the problems this year?

Tony Hanks, Trevor Woodman and Shaun Edwards must be pulling their hair out trying to get to the bottom of the issue (well, Tony and Trevor, anyway). Is the squad weaker than in previous years? Is the glut of injuries in the front and second rows disproportionately affecting our game? Is there some issue in the squad that we don't know about? Or can we simply blame the poor winter weather for stymieing our game-plan, and look forward to a resurgence once spring decides to arrive? Such is the fruitless speculation that we fans are forced to indulge in while we watch, powerless, from the stands.

Gloucester's season to date appears to have been a rough inversion of our own. While Wasps were winning at the beginning of the season, Gloucester were suffering a bruising series of defeats, losing to London Irish, Northampton, Saracens, Sale, and Wasps themselves, all before the beginning of November. Indeed, Wasps' victory at Kingsholm at the end of October secured our only try-scoring bonus point to date, and was the epitome of a rugby smash and grab raid. Gloucester dominated possession and territory on the day, yet Wasps' bludgeoning defence and clinical accuracy in attack resulted in a 6-35 final score and a joyous trip back down the M4 that evening.

Fast forward to the beginning of March, and my how our relative fortunes have changed. It is true that Gloucester still lie eight points and two places below us in the Guinness Premiership table, but if you had watched the two teams playing last week, you'd think there was only one team likely to prevail this Sunday. After Wasps' excellent start to the season, inconsistency and an inability to turn attacking play into points has seen us lose five of our last nine league matches, scoring just seven tries in that period. Gloucester, while their record in the last nine games is only marginally better, have scored fourteen tries in their last three games alone. Bonus points have edged them closer to Wasps in the table and a win this Sunday would put them right behind us, with a run of form behind them. Did somebody mention a crunch match?

How much of Gloucester's recent recovery is down to the input of former Wasps director of rugby Ian McGeechan is another of those imponderables that gets brought up over post-match beers, but if it isn't anything to do with rugby's latest knight of the realm then you've got to say his timing is impeccable. Suddenly the likes of James Simpson-Daniel are running tries in for fun (making, once again, a mockery of his exclusion from the EPS), Nicky Robinson is directing play intelligently and effectively from fly-half, and Gloucester's forwards are seeing reward for their hard work in the tight at last. A loss at Welford Road two games ago is pause for thought, and shows that Gloucester aren't all the way there yet, but then we can hardly quibble about defeats to Leicester given our own experience there in January.

For Wasps, it's difficult to know what the prescription should be. Players can't be magicked back from injury and, while you'd hope that George Skivington has recovered from the mild concussion that saw him miss the trip to Headingley, it's probably too much to ask that England will release Joe Worsley from the dubious advantages of EPS duty this weekend, especially in light of the James Haskell tug of war. That means that this Sunday's pack will be pretty similar to the one that got beaten at Leeds, and will have to step up like they did against Sale and Saracens if we're to get anything from this game. Rob Webber will probably replace Joe Ward at hooker (and ought, perhaps, to captain the team given his one hundred percent record to date!), but he and Skivington are the only likely changes that I can see. Time to knuckle down, lads!

Of course, the subtext to this game is the Amlin Challenge Cup quarter final on the 11^th of April. There are two schools of thought whenever league and cup games crop up close together like this. One says that getting a win from the first game is a crucial psychological advantage going into the second. The other, the superstitious school of thought, says that each team will win one of the games, and it's up to you to decide which is most important. I tend to the former point of view but if the latter holds any weight at all (and I've no idea whether or not statistics back it up), then which match do you choose? I've been thinking about it all morning and I still can't decide.

Prediction: after last week I'm loath to make any predictions at all, but the form book suggests Gloucester to win.

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