I`m just wondering what people would think is a realistic number of points needed to survive for this season. I know people say that about 40-45 mark will be ok but I have a feeling it will be a lot higher this season and is this year one of the harder seasons at this level for all teams in the division?
With the greatest respect - where did you get the idea that 40 points might be enough ? I think you'll find that 40 points is the target for the Premier League. In the lower leagues 50+ points is generally the minimum. Other threads recently have raised your query in a different guise ( see 'five from twelve' ) We need to get to the 50 mark BEFORE the last match of the season - we've been relegated too many times on the last day of the season for my liking
In the 2009/10 season we were relegated with 50 points, 4 more wins will give us 53 and hopefully safety.
In the last three seasons safety has been achieved with 49/44/48 points. To go down with 50 is unusual but we know it happened in 9/10 but that was on goal difference. On the other hand we would not be able to count on goal difference this year.
It all depends on whether the bottom teams put up a fight or go to pieces. If they all fight we need 51 points this season. Hope we are there before the last match.
Sorry made a mistake with my calculation at the top it should have been 50 points or so. Sorry for any confusion even at 50 points I still have a feeling it may not be enough as apart from a few teams at the top anyone can beat anyone this season and I believe the form book is not worth much compared to other seasons.
The form book is everything. Crawley were the team in form and dominated most of the game but lucky for us had poor finishing plus they have played a lot of games recently so maybe tiring. Don't think we would have a chance against Coventry earlier this season but now i am hopeful of 3 points, but then again we don't seem to win 2 games in a row. 3 more wins and 2 draws should be enough.
Without wishing to seem rude, maybe its better if we simply focus on the game to game basis rather than fixating on a certain points total that we have to achieve because at the moment if we simply match the results of the bottom four we stay in the league. I do understand that a certain points total is required in the low 50's to mid 50's but personally I think were at a stage where we have to just look at trying to win our games rather than look at what everyone else is doing, ever the optimist I cant see us getting truly dragged in anymore after that win against crawley and feel we can kick on and finish very safely mid table.
The problem with game to game focus is that there is no concentration on the wider issues such as experimenting to improve things for next season. The ideal situation would be to pick up a couple of wins soon and then try things accepting the risk involved. Priority 1 is to stay up but this is followed closely by priority 2 which must be to make the right decisions on who to release and who to recruit. Next season's squad has to be better.
A very fair point Bristol but get the impression that a big shake up of the club will happen in the summer meaning that changing things up to see what other players are like may just be a waste considering they could be moved on in the summer.
the optimist side of me agrees with you ! ( in as much that we DO need to focus on OUR performance on a match-to-match basis ) the pessimist in me still sees a nervous snd to the season
with respect to your opinion ( trying to be careful to anyone who doesn't agree with me ) I don't think that, in our current position, we can afford the luxury of 'experimenting' -- maybe if we become 'safe' with 2 or 3 games to go ( some hope ) - then I have already said, we should look to using fringe players
