- The players seem to be really playing for the manager, or their own contracts, or both.
- League Two is the tightest league in England, with only 30 points between first and last.
- We've been there - the pressure to hold on to those playoff spots is immense, and someone always buckles under it.
- The pitch is a disaster, but London Welsh only have two more 'home' games this season.
- The injury list is slowly diminishing.
- We've had a few bad spells, but we're not completely out of it - a really good run-in will get the fans excited and the opposition nervous.
OK, flame-retardant pants on - do your worst, Internet!
Winning against Rotherham is imperative if this glimmer of hope is going to transform into anything more concrete.
It's all very well beating Gillingham and Vale (and I'm in no way disparaging that fantastic achievement), but we're not going to catch them. It's teams like Rotherham we have to catch, and we won't do that unless we beat them at home. A win tomorrow night would get me a little bit excited again. I still don't see us making the play-offs though. Even 3 wins in a row has proved a tough ask for this team, let alone the 6 or 7 we need to mount a real challenge.
There must be a faint glimmer of hope because I've started to do the maths. The past two seasons have seen 69 and 72 points secure the 7th place spot. 7 wins from the remaining 11 would give us 70.
If (and it's a big if) we can beat Rotherham tomorrow night, we then play a very out of sorts Torquay team (1 point from the last 6 games), a poor Barnet side and then a Chesterfield side who are unlikely to have much to play for. 9 points from these four games is very much achievable and would leave us needing to win 4 from 7 to make the 70 points.
One thing is clear, draws are no good to us and so Wilder has to go for it in every game.
The thing for me is the number of teams still left in with a shout - if we were a clear 8th, then to pull back the gap might be achievable, but we are 11th, an extra win behind Southend and Fleetwood, and Bradford a point behind with two games in hand. So even if you discount Morecambe, Wycombe and Chesterfield (who basically face the same challenge as we do, but who perhaps arent on our 'current form') then that is still four teams that have an advantage on us that we need to claw our way past.
One small positive I suppose is that the gap from 7th to 3rd is only 2 points and even the top two are on such wobbles that neither are certain to hold onto an automatic spot, so that does mean a wider pool of teams from which the four fail-ers are to come from, but even so. Whether such a scrap will focus minds on getting points or apply such pressure as to be dropping them remains to be seen!
We are just a little bit too far off I think, which clouds things in terms of whether Wilder stays or goes. Being half a dozen points closer would make the decision clearer (make the top 7 stay, dont then go), whereas it is perhaps not so clear cut as in our current situation. Some people will claim that it is, others may be less keen to pull the plug if he gets within touching distance - last season we were 9th with 68points, if we were to do or beat either this time it would be a tough call to say bye bye wouldn't it?
However, what at least these last two victories have done is remove the spectre of relegation from over our shoulders, for which we should be grateful!
Wilder sets his team up best when there's nothing to play for, or the big occasion, and for teams who like to play football. It's the bread and butter of putting away teams like York last week that park the bus that frustrate us, or when we try and sit on a lead by defending deep. Give us Slumdon any day, or the play-off semifinals or final, or the run-in in 2009 when we were still in with a chance of the last playoff place on the last day of the season.
On Saturday we went for it for 90 minutes. No fannying around sitting back on a lead letting Vale attack. I'm lucky that I've seen several performances on the road like this recently. (Exeter, Gillingham, Wimbledon, Plymouth). Fleetwood is the exception, who home and away are a Stevenage like side.
We've said a lot about the pitch, but playing on Gillingham's nice wide, green, dry pitch was like a breath of fresh air. Saturday, at least the Kassam pitch was dry, even if there was a lot of bare patches in the grass.
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Onto the faint glimmer.
Looking at the run-in, there's only really Rotherham as a top team. OK there are several other clubs who will put up a fight, Northampton away perhaps. Our April fixtures couldn't look any easier on paper, with the exception of teams who may be trying to dodge the relegation places like Dagenham and Accrington.
So can we start to dig away at the eight point gap to 7th? Obviously it will need a lot of wins, Rotherham, Morecambe, Northampton being the six-pointers. I don't worry too much about the teams around us, if they also put together the required run-in, they'll be taking points of the current top seven.
So then it is down to one or more of the top 7 having a bit of a "Wilder blip" and going on an awful run.
The other key difference to our usual Wilder blips is that he surely won't be allowed any more emergency loans, when we only got the 2009/10 promotion by going back to the tried and tested players, after an awful spring losing to Hayes and Yeading when trying to tinker and improve a good side by trying out loan players. Similarly, 2011/12, when a play-off spot was thrown away by bringing in the likes of Dean Morgan and Mehdi Kerrouche, leaving Constable on the bench and ignoring JPP who was I think back to fitness.
Anyway, let's see how we get on against Rotherham first.
After beating a good Slumdon team on March 3rd last spring we went to Shrewsbury
on the following Tuesday night and were seconds away from a 2-1 win until
the Shrews player thrashed a ball into Clarkie's top right hand corner from 30 yards.
Kerrouche came off the bench that night after Lee Holmes scored a fine double for United.
Pittman pulled up against Slumdon in the last minute with a hamstring and Beano of course
was red carded against the Robins.Leven was ruled out of the Slumdon game with a shoulder injury
too.Tonkin was in for an injured Davis I think.
Basically we've had an injury problem stretching back more than 12 month.
Isn't it when we start talking about a "faint glimmer of hope", or words to that effect that things tend to go tits up again. So stop it please. Very much one game at a time for me.
Given those two bad extended sequences of results we have had this season, I am staggered and rather happy that we can still be talking about even a glimmer.
I missed the Plymouth game.
I attended the York game.
I was ill and missed the Gillingham game.
I was ill and missed the Port Vale game.
I'm almost better but won't be going to the Rotherham game.
I will be going to the Torquay game.
What has also been pointed out is the "injury crisis" which has been blamed for many of the poor results earlier in the season. I was happy with this excuse until the lack of medicals was brought up, but still feel many were pure bad luck.
But look at those injured players from earlier this season and who played vs Gillingham and Port Vale:-
Clarke, Leven, JPP, Richards - injured
Duberry - played last 4 minutes, unused sub
Whing - ill, and played 45 minutes
Worley - unused sub, not on the bench
Craddock - unused sub
Constable - played last 17 and 23 minutes.
So of the injury problems: These are the players we have got back playing most of the two matches: Batt, Davis, Smalley.
The others are hardly missed (Whing perhaps the exception), and we can seemingly afford to keep Constable on the bench with the Smalley - Potter - Rigg front line preferred.
is it just me that thinks that the current formation will only have a limited shelf-life before it starts being worked out, and that we are going to need at least one more re-organisation (442 again?) to keep things going until the end of the season?
"Geoff" wrote:A quick guide to whether we'll make the playoffs:
I missed the Plymouth game.
I attended the York game.
I was ill and missed the Gillingham game.
I was ill and missed the Port Vale game.
I'm almost better but won't be going to the Rotherham game.
I will be going to the Torquay game.
Enough said?
It's not you, it's me....My attendance matches yours exactly.
"Mooro" wrote:is it just me that thinks that the current formation will only have a limited shelf-life before it starts being worked out, and that we are going to need at least one more re-organisation (442 again?) to keep things going until the end of the season?
I guess one person's change in formation is another 'tinker'. Whilst CW did seem to have a fixation of 4 3 3 for a while this seems to have disappeared. In many games the formation seems to change during the game. So agaisnt Port Vale it seemed to go from a 4- 2- 3- 1 to more of a 4-4-2 when Beano came on (albeit two full backs in the centre midfield positions with Whing and Capaldi).
So in all likelihood the formation will change a number of times before the end of the season (agaisnt the Barnet's of the world I wouldn't be surprised to see Beano or Craddock upfront with Smalley).
It sounds like Evan may change things around today based on Rotherham playing against Oxford and having 'done his homework', so I reckon CW will change formatioins ona horses for courses basis especially when we get these 'difficult' games out of the way.
"Mooro" wrote:is it just me that thinks that the current formation will only have a limited shelf-life before it starts being worked out, and that we are going to need at least one more re-organisation (442 again?) to keep things going until the end of the season?
Let's not get too caught up in formations and tactics, if we'd played as well as we have vs Gills and Vale we'd have beaten York and many others, if we'd played as badly as we did vs York when we played Gills and Vale we'd have lost, no matter which formation the players are/were in, the main difference is the players have played much better in the last two matches.
