Form of our opponents

[BillyStubbsTears]

Just reflecting on how bad the form of the other competitors for promotion has been in the final few matches. That's not for a moment to take anything away from us. We have been excellent. But it is quite astonishing think about it.

When we all travelled to Tranmere just 10 days ago, we were in 4th place, 4 points off the top.

In theory, if everything had gone badly, we could still have finished in 11th place.

Today, we are promoted and in theory could lose next week and still win the title.

This is how many points the sides in the top 11 have won in the last 3 matches.

Port Vale   4
Bradford City   1
Walsall         2
Rovers         9
Wimbledon   1
Notts County   3
Grimsby Town   2
Colchester    1
Chesterfield   5
Salford City   6
Crewe          1

An amazingly poor performance by nearly everybody bar us.


We could have lost any one of the last three games and we'd still have had promotion confirmed with a game to go.

We could have lost all three and still had a chance of promotion next Saturday.

This must be one of the worst final performances of competitors for promotion that there has ever been.

[Colemans Left Hook]

EXCLUDING THE YEAR WHEN WE WERE 50/1 ON* TO TAKE THE TITLE - ALREADY PROMOTED - WITH ABOUT 6 GAMES TO GO & PORTSMOUTH (AVAILABLE AT 100/1 THEN) WON IT ON THE FINAL DAY PIPPING PLYMOUTH AS IT WAS OUR TURN TO COLLAPSE

Gaz never hedged "he chose poorly" some of us did.

Conclusion

What comes around goes around   

* worth an entry in The Guinness Book of Records

[GazLaz]

Just reflecting on how bad the form of the other competitors for promotion has been in the final few matches. That's not for a moment to take anything away from us. We have been excellent. But it is quite astonishing think about it.

When we all travelled to Tranmere just 10 days ago, we were in 4th place, 4 points off the top.

In theory, if everything had gone badly, we could still have finished in 11th place.

Today, we are promoted and in theory could lose next week and still win the title.

This is how many points the sides in the top 11 have won in the last 3 matches.

Port Vale   4
Bradford City   1
Walsall         2
Rovers         9
Wimbledon   1
Notts County   3
Grimsby Town   2
Colchester    1
Chesterfield   5
Salford City   6
Crewe          1

An amazingly poor performance by nearly everybody bar us.


We could have lost any one of the last three games and we'd still have had promotion confirmed with a game to go.

We could have lost all three and still had a chance of promotion next Saturday.

This must be one of the worst final performances of competitors for promotion that there has ever been.

Always find this part of the season interesting. As someone that thinks about process over outcome it’s purely “outcome” time isn’t it.

Look at Walsall, they wouldn’t have collapsed and would have won the league comfortably from the position they were in far more often than not.

People celebrate and commiserate singular outcomes that are dictated by plenty of randomness. With exactly the same teams, performances and variables seasons could play out in very different ways. That goes for life. Not a very glamorous way to think about things though is it.

[Dutch Uncle]

EXCLUDING THE YEAR WHEN WE WERE 50/1 ON* TO TAKE THE TITLE - ALREADY PROMOTED - WITH ABOUT 6 GAMES TO GO & PORTSMOUTH (AVAILABLE AT 100/1 THEN) WON IT ON THE FINAL DAY PIPPING PLYMOUTH AS IT WAS OUR TURN TO COLLAPSE

Gaz never hedged "he chose poorly" some of us did.

Conclusion

What comes around goes around   

* worth an entry in The Guinness Book of Records

IIRC, after 42 matches the position was:

Rovers 85 points
Plymouth 79 points
Portsmouth 75 points

Plymouth got 8 points to finish on 87
Portsmouth got 12 points to finish on 87 with better GD

We got nul points and finished third in a one horse race, including losing after leading after 74 minutes in our final match at bottom club Hartlepool. That win alone would have been enough for the title.

If we do win next weekend it would go some way to evening out that one.

[Pancho Regan]

The Easter weekend did it for us.

NONE of the top 8 teams registered a single win between them, whereas we won both of our games.

Extraordinary set of results.