Play off form

[BillyStubbsTears]

Last 14 games in the League

P14 W5 D7 L2 F16 A11 Pts 22

[dknward2]

2 points a game needed but happy with only 2 losses

just need to convert them draws into wins 

[dickos1]

2 points a game would get us pushing for 3rd 4th place we don't need that. Were only a couple of points off playoffs

[BillyStubbsTears]

9 of the last 14 games have been against sides who are currently in the mix for promotion/play-offs. Our form, in probably the toughest spell of the whole season, has been excellent. Time to capitalise over the next half a dozen games now.

[Bentley Bullet]

Now don't get me wrong here, I'm obviously delighted with the teams improvement on the pitch, but the fact that in our 10 league wins this season we have won 9 of them by the odd goal, suggests that we have an inability to kill games off.

Today's game by all accounts suggests we could and should have killed Chesterfield off, making any chance of a  comeback out of their reach, but true to form we didn't.

Hopefully the new signings will make us more convincing promotion challengers, but until they do I fear our hopes of the play-offs may be a little premature.

[OxonViking]

We are looking quite a good bet to be there or thereabouts. But, forgive me for not getting too excited Billy, as I believed your confident predictions last year about not going down.
Once bitten and all that.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Oxon

I'll say it again. The statistics never said ANYTHING about us not going down. They said how many points were needed to stay up and they were bang on.

On that score, there's little change in the form of the teams looking like being play-off places. The sixth best side on the division are currently on target to get 67 points which would be possibly the lowest total ever needed to get in the play-offs.

(Note: that is a very simple analysis. It's just looking at the average points each sides has got over the season so far and extrapolating it out to 46 matches. The prediction method that's worked bang on for the past two years from Jan onwards has been to look at the recent form of each side in contention and extrapolate that to the end of the season. NOT - I repeat - to say WHICH team will finish where, but to see how many points will be needed for each final position. Trouble is this year, there are loads of teams in contention and I'm too busy to do all the number crunching. What I would say is that I find it hard to believe that 67 points will get a play-off place. There are so many teams in the mix that it seems inevitable that 2 or 3 will hit good form from now to April. At a gues, and it's no more than that, I'd say probably 70-72 points will do it. If we continue our grim since November through to the end of the season, we'll have 72 points. It's looking do-able.)

[acacia94]

BST – your analysis on the run in to the end of last season should have been run out on A2 and pinned up at Cantley. We needed very few points to stay to up and had the tactics been tweaked to gather 1 or 2 pojnts in those few games we would have stayed up.
I didn't do stats or maths (art&design puff) at school but there's something about the simplicity of what you present that can't be bloody well argued with.
Off now – the last of the birthday JD is nearly gone.
Great game of football today. Tremendous.

[Bentley Bullet]

 As it turned out, in hindsight we only needed a couple of draws to survive, but our downfall was we went out to win instead.

The simplicity of that in reality though is how do you set a team out to draw, instead of win?

[acacia94]

He's a striker. He'll go out to win. its not like having err, Rob Jones as a manager.

[Bentley Bullet]

But we need to win games if we want promotion!

[OxonViking]

I know all that Billy . It was a jesting, didn't think I needed to put on the end 
Im still blaming the rain at Charlton. 

[BillyStubbsTears]

Sorry Oxon. knackered after a tough week and my irony sensor was off.

[OxonViking]

No worries and no need for sorry's.
These days, This place is too much of a serious site as it is at times. More sarcasm,piss taking,irony and smut- with a bit of football chat thrown in for good measure.I say. I miss some of those old posters on here.