I have read Peter Taylor's comments from Sunday after the Carlisle win and sadly they appear to me to be mirroring some of his early season tactics. http://www.gillinghamfootballclub.com/news/article/pt-carlisle-sunday-february-9-1348307.aspx? With us 10 points off the playoffs and nine points clear of relegation he states; “We are going to work because until we are guaranteed League One at least we will carry on working extremely hard. The players might be thinking about a few days off, but I can assure you they’re not.” With teams like Peterborough sitting in sixth place being so inconsistent, all we need to do is string together a sequence of consecutive wins and that could be us. Let's focus on a proper challenge and sixth place for our goal this season, to get the players focused. The Posh are there for the taking, just ask Simply. Leyton Orient have started at long last to go into freefall, with two straight defeats. As for Rotherham WHO?...oh yeah Steve Evans, let's build up to World Cup Final day on the 5th April. Yes, we have played two games more but they still have to get the points on the board and we still have a visit to Poshland with the bouncing pizza still to visit us. We now have a long break before facing Sheffield United, maybe after all Martin Allen was right, we are going to smash League One, discuss...
To me,what Taylor is saying implies to me that once we are mathematically safe, we will ease off and not bother for the rest of the season. So presumably he feels we've got no chance of the play offs. We probably haven't ,but that doesn't send out a good message to the supporters. What will be the point of attending matches if the team will just be treading water. The play offs were introduced to prevent such a scenario, becuase prior to them , that is what teams would do from March onwards.
As soon as you try to be optimistic you open yourself up to all kinds ridicule. I take PT's comments as cautious rather than pessimistic.
I see it as the complete opposite, He wants to keep working hard to ensure we achieve safety, once that is done we can relax and play better football without the pressure.
I agree with Grumpy #shockhorror Lets not run before we can walk, the target is surviving this season and build for the next promotion push (whenever that is), anything more is a bonus
I think Orient can rest safe in the knowledge that they are 22 points ahead of us with 15 games left! I don't think we will be going down by any stretch but the table is a little bit false at the moment and until it is caught up we won't have a true picture of where we really stand but we are definitely closer to the bottom than the playoffs. Anything inside the top half would be a great achievement but brb there is definitely nothing wrong with aiming high.
Of course having the points in the bag is better then having the games in hand and although we have that nine point buffer between ourselves and the bottom four I am still looking over our shoulder and seeing who has got games in hand, who Gillingham have got to play who are below us in the table and how many points we need to retain our League One Status (I think we need 53 to be on the safe side). Our objective this season was to stay up and I think League One survival will be our objective again next season (assuming we stay up this season which is looking very likely at the moment), I would love to see Gillingham challenging for the playoffs in League One but if that doesn't happen this season or next season I am not going to be too disappointed because they are some massive clubs in this division with more financial power then ourselves and we might have to do a Leyton Orient and build over 3 - 4 season's before we are in a position to challenge for a playoff spot in League One. But if we do go on a late surge for a playoff spot between now and the end of the season, at least we would retain our League One Status earlier then expected, I don't want us needing a result against Shrewsbury on the final day of the season to retain our League One Status, that 3 - 0 defeat to Wycombe is still fresh in my mind and all the results that could of gone against that day, did go against us.
FOM, I know the games in hand do distort the table but we need to look forward and not back. out of interest, even if all the teams below us won every game (impossible) we would still be ok. 16th........Gillingham..........38 points. 17th........Oldham..............37 points. 18th........Stevenage..........37 points. 19th........Carlisle..............36 points. 20th........Tranmere...........34 points. 21st........Crewe................34 points. 22nd........Bristol City..........31 points. 23rd........Not's county.......30 points. 24th........Shrewsbury........30 points.
It is also a bit off the mark suggesting we are 10pts from play-offs and 9 from relegation as if it's a 50/50 proposition. That implies it would be just as easy to go either way. Whereas we are really 10 points + 2 games from play-offs (and relegation). When you are making up ground that is a whole lot harder to win 2 games (with everyone else losing) than lose 2 games (with others winning as we have found to our cost in recent years). Also, when you are looking up the table, we would need not only one or 2 teams to go on a bad run, that will probably happen anyway. But we need 5 or 6 or more teams to do a lot worse than us. And that is very unlikely. Could happen, but unlikely. Personally, I think we are (hopefully) free from too much worry about either scenario. Of the two outcomes though, I reckon relegation would be a whole heap more likely than play-offs. That's not being pessimistic, that's being realistic (in the gills world anyway...). Next season, I hope we can all be a little more optimistic about our chances of top 6/10/half, rather than aiming to stay up.
I looked at the table from a different perspective. My aim/target/goal would be sixth placed, obviously the closest placed playoff team to us with a a ten point gap and two games in hand. Now let's look at that teams fixtures; next two games Walsall, Swindon, the two teams directly below them, both those teams only have one game in hand on us. The Posh also have to travel to Wolves and Preston as well having to play us in a six pointer. If we can suddenly find some consistency, the Gills usual roller coaster ride might commence. Let's look forward rather than over our shoulder. Last season, Tranmere Rovers were sitting in third place at this stage with a 12 point gap over eleventh place (games equal and date extracted from the 12/02/2013). Tranmere Rovers eventually finished in eleventh place, proving anything is possible in reverse of their scenario. I'm not even looking at 3rd place I just want 6th or have i now caught the infectious bug of being too pessimistic and should be aiming higher... lol Oldham has to be one of the best examples of a fall from grace at exactly the same stage in the 2010/11 season and sixth place, they only went on to gain a further eleven points for the entire season!
I understand you're being optimistic brb, and I see where you are coming from. But when you say about Tranmere faltering last season, and Oldham a few years ago, that is just 1 team each season faltering. For us to get 6th, we'd have to gain not only 10pts AND 2 games on Peterboro. But also - 8pts an 1 game on Walsall 6pts and 1 game on Swindon (would be nice) 4pts and 2 games on Vale and 1pt and 2 games on MK Not to mention Colchester, Coventry and Crawley who are below us but will probably go above us with their games in hand. So, even if we were to have a fantastic run-in, we'd still need Boro to lose about half of their games, Walsall 5 of theirs, and the rest to do worse than us. Realistically, if we were to have a great run-in and get 2pts per game from here, we'd end up with 68 points. I'm fairly sure even that wouldn't be enough. And I'm too long a gills fan to entertain the notion Would prefer you to be right than me tho It would make it a fantastic end-of-season even if we then did get knocked out straight away.
Unfortunately he is a negative manager, i know this after hearing a current player state, that he is so different than Ma, in a way where MA- tried to look at positives, where PT- looks at the negatives ? Is it the right way, in my view no, but time will tell.
6th placed Posh & 7th placed Walsall draw, 1 point and one game less. Like I say anything is possible if we find that consistency. Swindon drew as well.
The pessimist in me suggests that todays results were good for us with no team below us winning and 5 of those sides below us have played as many or more games than us. Would love to think that we could make the play offs and if we finish the season like we did last time Taylor was in charge 30 pts from our last 15 matches then we would end on 68 pts, however 70 pts is the lowest points tally ever to make the play offs and on more than one occasion 80 pts have been needed!
I think there is a distinct lack of realism in some of these posts. It is evident that the league postion looks quite satisfactory but a bit of delving reveals that the position is built on fragile foundations. only three teams have lost more games than Gills. The illusion of "comfort is attributable to eleven wins and just five draws. So have the wins been warranted? Well you can say that the scores say so, but out of the eleven wins, eight of them have been by one goal. in other words, the odd goal here or there could have transformed the league position. It is to the enormous credit of PT that he has made the most of a pretty paper thin squad but any talk of playoffs, whilst mathematically achievable, is way beyond the capabilities of the squad. Avoiding relegation will remain an immense achievement for these players after their dreadful start. Todays results help a lot!
bristol407 I've been watching the Gills for too long to expect anything other than realism ! To answer your question regarding the 11 victories. I think that 2 of them - Sheffield Utd & Carlisle (both away) were 'lucky' -but luck drawn from gritty performances. The other wins were deserved. Of the other defeats, I would say that in the following games we had bad luck, and the defeat could 'easily' have been a draw or better; Colchester (H) (0-1) Preston (H) (1-2) Port Vale (A) (1-2) Orient (H) (1-2) ( 90 min goal to lose the game) Stevenage (A) (1-3) - 10 men for most of the game - yet created enough chances to win ! Then there are other games, such as Peterborough (H) (2-2) where we conceded in 98th minute. - although you'll tell me that an injury time equaliser v Walsall salvaged a point. I suppose I would have to concede that the last gasp winner v Wolves was a 3rd fortunate victory. All in all I think we might have been 7 or 8 points better off than our current 38. Only THEN could we even contemplate talk of a play-off push.
Today's results were great for us "realists" Bit more likely we will stay up. The only result affecting the "optimists" would be Vale drawing. So not much difference there.
Whilst still mathematically possible albeit very unlikely we should aim for the play offs at least if as expected we fall short of that aim we would still have achieved the very first aim of most teams at the start of the season first and foremost get to the safety mark as early as possible, setting standards to just survival means failure is a whole lot worse
Our overall record for league 1 puts us 5th in the all time rankings, shame it's not this years table. http://www.statto.com/football/stats/england/league-one/all-time-table/full
