Ward says a number of teams outside the top seven can still harbour realistic ambitions of sneaking into the play-offs. The top seven looked to be well on the way to pulling away from the rest up until a couple of weeks ago, but a run of poor results for Fleetwood Town and Southend United has offered those below a glimmer of hope. Eighth-placed Plymouth Argyle, who come to the Memorial Stadium to face Rovers on Saturday, are in pole position to capitalise should those above continue to falter. Ward said: "They will certainly be thinking about that, even though, I'm sure their manager, John Sheridan, will be trying to play that down a little bit. I also read somewhere that Nigel Worthington was talking about the possibility of late bid by York City, who are a side that are only a few points better off than us at the moment. We're at that stage of the season where the teams in the top seven will start worrying about dropping out, while a lot of teams outside, like Plymouth and York City, will be thinking that they could get in there. We are very positive when we are talking to our players, but we are also sensible enough to know the most important thing for us to focus on at the moment is maintaining our current form and also trying to improve on it. We had been in the bottom three for a while, which was kind of uncomfortable, but we have picked up and we have started to ask yourselves who we can catch above us. If we can carry on improving with three of our next four games at home that will take us even further away from that danger area and then after that who knows? We're too far away to be even thinking about that at this moment in time and we would have to see how the next group of matches will go before we could start talking about things any differently."
We are about 6 points too far from a playoff push IMO. We will pretty much need to win all of our home games to get there anyway as we are **** away lol even winning all our home games would only give us 57 points, meaning we would most likely need to get an additonal 8-10 points on the road to get to about the 65-67 mark (usually last play off place)...to much to ask for IMO
No chance every time someone mentions this we end up going on a bad run still not save from relegation yet
I know it's quite tight in League 2, but any talk of the play-offs when we are 18th in the table seems ridiculous.
i dont think ward is thinking about the play offs. i think as its very close from 8th to near the bottom, any side that goes on a good run has a chance and at the moment were 5 games unbeaten and keeping clean sheets so the interviewer asked about the play offs and ward is playing it down and rightly so. but deep down i think the players can see a glimmer of hope. these next few games will decide if were in the running in the chasing pack or if were fighing for mid table or even for our league 2 status. these next 3 games i feel will decide this. plymouth, dag & red and then hartlepool away. good thing is 4 of our next 6 games is at home where we have the 4th or 5th best league record. if we come out of these home games with max points.... then it should be interesting to see where we are in the table. however personally i would take 11th now top half finish.
Todays Post has Ward playing down our hopes of the play offs but said our fans deserve to be talking about the play offs.... Rovers ended the afternoon in 14th place in League 2, 8 points behind the top 7. When asked how he felt about people speculating about a late charge for the play offs, Ward said: "The fans deserve to do that. I had a little bit of excitement after the game myself, but I've calmed down a bit now. What could happen if we win this game or that game are great topics to discuss in the pub or if they are out to dinner on Saturday night. I'm sure that that our supporters will have a good night and a good weekend, but for the players it is all about our recovery ahead of another game to come quickly here again on Tuesday night. We will try very hard for our supporters and for everybody else connected with the football club, but we won't get involved in talking about things like that too much for the time being. I am very much aware of where we are in the league and now we have to push on again. There is a slight bit of disappointment that we weren't in the top half of the table at the end of the game, but we are where we are and we are getting a little bit better and stronger with each week that goes by. We tried extremely hard to win the game. We were on the front foot for long periods against the best team in the league on current form. We had to be in good form ourselves and we were. We played some good football and I have to be really pleased with that considering we recently beat Burton Albion here and have also done well in a couple of really tough away fixtures. We have got better and our squad looks a lot stronger now. There is a strength and confidence about the group and we have to progress with that for as long as we possibly can." http://www.bristolpost.co.uk/fans-d...says-Bristol/story-20786939-detail/story.html
No! Not the dreaded 'P' word! I don't know how anyone can even think about that when we're just a couple of losses away from a relegation dogfight. If we win our next three games I would probably start to think it's a possibility, but our failure to win away will simply have to cease if we really think we can reach the playoffs. Granted, performances have improved but I really don't think we'll get there this year. I hope I'm wrong....I usually am!
