One or two of you may be surprised to find out that we in fact have the best record against teams in the bottom half of the table! Considering we all thought we fail to win the games we should and do win the games we shouldnt i found this to be somewhat odd! But there you go! http://stats.football365.com/dom/ENG/D1/vbothalf.html
I think it's a testament to how tight the legaue is, there have only been a few points between us and the bottom half all season. If you looked at our record against teams in the bottom 4/5 we'd be right down there!
If people want to be negative they'll point out that in the playoffs we'll be playing sides from the top half and not the bottom half. If we have a better record against sides in the bottom half then those teams above us in the playoffs must have a better record against top half sides than we do, so we might as well write the season off now.
Along with Cardiff we've also beaten Leicester and Birmingham and we travelled to Ipswich and won when they'd got off to a flyer. Also beaten potential top 6 cnadidates Reading and at the time a rejuvanated Forest. I think the results have balanced out between the top and bottom sides, though a draw at Doncaster (where Southampton lost) maybe sticks out more than a draw at Brighton.
I was only making the point to highlight there's always a way for the negative lot to find something to whinge about, but, mathematically they can't balance up (btw, 10 points vs top half, 23 vs bottom half). We've got more points than anybody against bottom half sides. There are 5 teams with more points in total. They must have scored more points against top half sides than we have. I just had a look. We're 17th in the table based on results against top half sides. The top 4 are the top 4, and Leeds are in 10th place. We've lost against 1st, 2nd, 5th, and 8th, drawn against 7th, and haven't played 4th yet. A win against 3rd place is good, but it hardly makes us look good for the playoffs that we've got 1 win from 5 games against other sides in the top 8 does it. Considering this only jumped into my head because I highlighted a similar thing to Huddersfield fans a few years ago when after a 6-0 win I said their defence wasn't very good and they were taking the piss it's amazing just how similar that record is considering that defence has been our strong point where it was their weakness. For the record, my target for automatic promotion is usually: Top 8 - draw at home, lose away = 7 points (we'd be the 8th team) Middle 8 - win at home, draw away = 32 points Bottome 8 - win both games = 48 points Total = 87 points
