United remain third on the table despite having not won for a month after all last weekend's matches finished in draws.

After touching down in Wellington last night and with a final training session this afternoon, Vidmar knows it is time The Reds started to make their own running.

“We can’t wait for the other teams and results to set our season up, we’ve got to start taking our destiny into our own hands," Vidmar said from Wellington.

“This is a massive game for us, it can either put us in a good position with seven games left or can turn the remainder of the season into a real scrap to try and secure a spot in the finals.”

An unlucky predicament for United so far this season has been their run with injuries and inability to get any consistency with personnel on the pitch.

This week, it is United’s defensive stocks which are being tested with central defenders Angelo Costanzo and Robert Cornthwaite unavailable.

Costanzo has a quad injury while Cornthwaite (who has played every minute of the season to date) will serve a one match ban after he received his fourth yellow card last week.

With Cassio also missing another game with a hamstring problem, Vidmar will rely on Victorian Premier League pedigrees Tomi Milardovic and Isyan Erdogan to slot in at the back.

Single defensive lapses have cost United in the past four games and goalkeeper Eugene Galekovic will be determined to keep the defence impenetrable for the entire 90 minutes as he look to keep his first clean sheet for the club.

The signs are better at the other end of the pitch with Olyroos duo Nathan Burns and Kristian Sarkies available after returning from the Olympic qualifiers while Brazilian playmaker Diego, who scored the last time The Reds were in Wellington, has also been declared fit.

These inclusions add further options for United in attack, which may take some of the attention away from marquee signing Paul Agostino, who has worked tirelessly as a target man up front but has no goals to show for it.

While United has only scored twice in the last four games, Vidmar believes the goals will come if the team continues to focus on the game plan.

“There is always pressure but we’ve just got to keep working on the things that we’ve done well and just be a bit smarter when we go forward and also in defence,” Vidmar said.

"If we do these basic things right we shouldn’t have a problem being able to win the game."

Wellington’s Adelaide United connection will be hoping to make an impact against The Reds with inaugural United squad member Shane Smeltz, who has scored in both of the two teams’ previous encounters, looking to add to his goal tally.

Defender Kristian Rees, who joined Phoenix a fortnight ago, will also be out to prove a point against his former side, however Adelaide United’s captain in the first two seasons of the Hyundai A-League, Ross Aloisi, will not play after failing to recover from a back injury that kept him out of Wellington’s last match.

Phoenix are running out of games to break into the top four, and The Reds know they will have a battle to knock over a desperate home side.

Wellington were the last team United defeated in the league and after receiving a break in how the results ended last weekend, United’s fate now lies in their own hands.

Playing in front of a parochial and potentially large Wellington home crowd, it looms as an enormous test and critical match in the context of The Reds’ season.

United must approach the game with a positive frame of mind while knowing that anything less than three points will make life extremely difficult with only six matches remaining in the Hyundai A-League after Round 15.