As I wrote earlier, we need 20 points from every 10 games to guarantee promotion in autos. We achieved that in the first 10 although we appeared to have blown it at 7 and 13. On reflection the beating by Palace maybe should not have been such a surprise looking at where they are now, and Huddersfield giving us the run round is reflected in their current position too. So now for the next 10 matches. On paper they seem easier than the last ten, although we know nothing ever comes easy in this league. The hardest matches on paper are Hull home, Middlesboro home and Bolton away. Most games are against teams that are (at least now) mid table although where they will be when they play us is another matter. History tells us its the banana skin teams right at the bottom of the league that always get us, and it nearly happened again yesterday. Any other season we'd have lost that game. So we put the 22 points in the bank and start the next 10 games on zero. No saying we only need 18 this time, those points are for when things goes tits at the end. 10 games, 20 points!! 5 games home and 5 away, it's not as easy as it sounds. A fortnight's rest, should see us with all our squad fully fit again, Bellers turner and all the other little niggly injuries. Can we get 20? What do you think?
doesnt seem to matter where you are in the table, form seems to go out of the window in this league, like i said before ipswich are second bottom and we are top but it was a relatively close game, its not like the premiership where you can point to a fixture and say thats a game we will win...
The only thing that concerns me is the lack of cover at the back. We will get suspensions at some point as well as injuries (interesting that MM put Turner on and took Kev off near the end). December and January may be positive times for us given the attacking options we have as other teams will also suffer with injuries and suspensions which we may be able to exploit.
Thats the idea. If e can go into the 3rd ten with 5 points spare it will cover our jacksies for when things go wrong in mid-winter, and if the don't go as wrong as other teams we are in a good play for the next 10.
20 from the next 10 would certainly put pressure on the other promotion hopefulls. 48 points at the half way stage of the season would be brilliant and make us strong favourites to go up. The important figure is how big a gap we can make above the third placed team.
