BST points prediction thread…

[dickos1]

Points per game is only relevant once all the games are finished

[BillyStubbsTears]

Points per game is only relevant once all the games are finished

But other league tables aren't?

Thread going THAT way is it?

Have fun. I'm out.

[dickos1]

I would’ve thought after last seasons thread you would’ve knocked it on the head this year

[DonnyBazR0ver]

If we maintain. 1.75 pts per game say, up to the last 4 games, we are likely be in the mix. Anything can happen from there.

Last season for example, other than Stockport and ourselves who were way above 2 pts per game for the last 12, the other promotion hopefuls were

Wrexham 2.00ppg
Mansfield 1.67ppg
MK Dons  1.67ppg
Crawley     1.08ppg
Crewe        0.60ppg

Of course, there were some extreme variations but the beauty of 3 points per game means owt can happen to any team, we should know that..

After 33 games last season we had 39 points in 20th place!

[BillyStubbsTears]

If we maintain. 1.75 pts per game say, up to the last 4 games, we are likely be in the mix. Anything can happen from there.

Last season for example, other than Stockport and ourselves who were way above 2 pts per game for the last 12, the other promotion hopefuls were

Wrexham 2.00ppg
Mansfield 1.67ppg
MK Dons  1.67ppg
Crawley     1.08ppg
Crewe        0.60ppg

Of course, there were some extreme variations but the beauty of 3 points per game means owt can happen to any team, we should know that..

After 33 games last season we had 39 points in 20th place!

Yes, agreed, we'd be in the mix. But if that did happen, I reckon the most likely outcome is that we'd need to win the last 4.

Me, I'd look at the rest of the season like this.

If my predictor is right and 3rd place is going to need say 86 points at the low end we've got a mountain to climb. That's 28 points needed from 13 games.

P13 W9 D1 L3

The others around us can do it slightly easier. Bradford, Wimbledon and Notts C can all hit that target with 29 from 14

P14 W9 D2 L3

Port Vale can do it with 31 from 15

P15 W10 D1 L4.

There's not MUCH in it for sure and you wouldn't bet on any specific team hitting that target. But chances are a couple will. And in that case, the probability, is that we won't. (Because there's more ways of being one of three who don't hit it, than one of two who do.

If we ARE going to make it, we've got to be realistic. We have as hard a run in as you can imagine. In the final 7 games we play the 4 sides currently occupying the top 4 places in the PPG table, plus Cheltenham and Colchester who have both been in play-off form for a couple of months. If we go into that run needing to win 6 of them, chances are it ain't going to happen.

So this next 6 games are absolutelt vital. I reckon we probably need a return of summat like P6 W4 D1 L1. That'd still leave us likely needing to win 5 of the last 7 which is still a massive ask. Let's start chalking the wins off.

[DonnyBazR0ver]

Yes, I think we'll need 9 wins, which means our home form must improve.

Plus, statistically, the 15 min period between 45 and 60 mins is our downfall for conceding the most goals than any other period. That doesn't say much for McCanns h/t teamtalk. That's got to be reversed.

[TonySoprano]

I keep saying it, but this could be the shittest promotion in our history. 

If it happens,  I'll be over the moon because I'm sick of this awful division.
I do worry that we'll come straight back down, but that's for another day.

No chance it could be worse than that league 2 season under ferguson.
16/17 when we won the league at Easter but still finished 3rd.

[colincramb]

I would’ve thought after last seasons thread you would’ve knocked it on the head this year

Why do you have to be such a div?

[ncRover]

Points per game is only relevant once all the games are finished

How is PPG table not relevant now but in your mind the league table right now is relevant ? Making it up as you go along for whatever suits

[dickos1]

Points per game is only relevant once all the games are finished

How is PPG table not relevant now but in your mind the league table right now is relevant ? Making it up as you go along for whatever suits

I spent all last season trying to explain to all you negative folk that the league table is irrelevant until the end of the season

[Filo]

Points per game is only relevant once all the games are finished

How is PPG table not relevant now but in your mind the league table right now is relevant ? Making it up as you go along for whatever suits

I spent all last season trying to explain to all you negative folk that the league table is irrelevant until the end of the season

You have now dropped the ppg relevance , ppg gives an accurate picture of how a team is currently performing, it does away with the games in hand and gives a true reflection of where we are in relation to other teams

[i_ateallthepies]

I would’ve thought after last seasons thread you would’ve knocked it on the head this year

Why do you have to be such a div?

All it shows, Colin, is that he talks out of his a*^% but we knew that before today.

[colincramb]

Points per game is only relevant once all the games are finished

What on earth are you talking about?

[ncRover]

Points per game is only relevant once all the games are finished

How is PPG table not relevant now but in your mind the league table right now is relevant ? Making it up as you go along for whatever suits

I spent all last season trying to explain to all you negative folk that the league table is irrelevant until the end of the season

And you’ve spent all this season saying “look at the league table”
“ we’re second” “we’re third” “we’re sixth” etc
Have you not?

[BigH]

I see that Opta are predicting us as a 6th place finish on 78-79 points. Feels about right to me given how we’ve been playing.

My ‘Hail Mary’ for an automatic place is that Wood comes back for the last 10 games and gives us the leadership that we’ve been lacking all season and which was so instrumental to our push last year. Wishing on a star stuff I know.

[JonWallsend]

 Thanks BST. You did warn us we might not like it and it has sparked some great debate.
I can't  help agreeing with the majority  that we are just going to fall short of the automatics and that isn't  based  on the ppg, just the evidence of my own eyes.
I was there yesterday  and Tuesday  and we are not quite right still in terms of performance  but I see today that Grant has acknowledged that we need to be better going forward.

I am hopeful, not based on anything  I've seen, that we will suddenly click and even if we don't win games, we will start to look more threatening ( we have in spells  recently MK Dons and Palace at home spring to mind)

That said, one goal leads always lead to nervous performances, especially  this time of year  and we have had good chances to kill the opposition  off in the two recent victories- Streete and Gibson in both games- which we haven't  taken.
 
The other thing that gives me confidence we can get over the line is our bench and Grant's changes. He is proactive, the subs impact the game and we always look better.

Team selection to begin with is a debate for another time

[TonySoprano]

Honestly, I'd be fine if we finished 4th,  and got a favourable tie in the play offs, with home advantage in the 2nd leg.

Feel we got cheated out of Wembley last season and I'm still gutted about that, and it's the best way to get promoted as we all know 

[Bessie Red]

If we maintain. 1.75 pts per game say, up to the last 4 games, we are likely be in the mix. Anything can happen from there.

Last season for example, other than Stockport and ourselves who were way above 2 pts per game for the last 12, the other promotion hopefuls were

Wrexham 2.00ppg
Mansfield 1.67ppg
MK Dons  1.67ppg
Crawley     1.08ppg
Crewe        0.60ppg

Of course, there were some extreme variations but the beauty of 3 points per game means owt can happen to any team, we should know that..

After 33 games last season we had 39 points in 20th place!

Yes, agreed, we'd be in the mix. But if that did happen, I reckon the most likely outcome is that we'd need to win the last 4.

Me, I'd look at the rest of the season like this.

If my predictor is right and 3rd place is going to need say 86 points at the low end we've got a mountain to climb. That's 28 points needed from 13 games.

P13 W9 D1 L3

The others around us can do it slightly easier. Bradford, Wimbledon and Notts C can all hit that target with 29 from 14

P14 W9 D2 L3

Port Vale can do it with 31 from 15

P15 W10 D1 L4.

There's not MUCH in it for sure and you wouldn't bet on any specific team hitting that target. But chances are a couple will. And in that case, the probability, is that we won't. (Because there's more ways of being one of three who don't hit it, than one of two who do.

If we ARE going to make it, we've got to be realistic. We have as hard a run in as you can imagine. In the final 7 games we play the 4 sides currently occupying the top 4 places in the PPG table, plus Cheltenham and Colchester who have both been in play-off form for a couple of months. If we go into that run needing to win 6 of them, chances are it ain't going to happen.

So this next 6 games are absolutelt vital. I reckon we probably need a return of summat like P6 W4 D1 L1. That'd still leave us likely needing to win 5 of the last 7 which is still a massive ask. Let's start chalking the wins off.

On the other hand if we beat Walsall, Wimbledon, Bradford & Notts Co (extremely tough ask I know but 3 are at home!) we would hopefully have a good chance of top 3 so long as we keep up our current form alongside those predictions.

[pib]

You wanted it. Here it is. Although you probably won't like it....

Remember, to save a lot of very tiresome arguing again, this is NOT predicting who will finish where. It's predicting how many points each final position will end up with. Nothing magic about it, but with a couple of exceptions, it's generally getting the finishing points tallies right to within a couple or 3 points for 15 years now.

So, here's this evening's prediction.

1st place: 90
2nd 89
3rd 88
4th 85
5th 85
6th 82
7th 75
8th 70
9th 69
10th 65

Bit of a bugger if that's anywhere near. It means we'd need to win 10 of our final 13 to make the top 3.

88 points feels high for 3rd place, but there are a lot of teams with already slightly better ppg than us, and similar recent form. Personally, I think we are going to struggle to make the top 3, and this confirms it. We still don't and never have consistently looked like clearly one of the top three sides this season.

Interesting. Very surprised by the high predicted points totals for 2nd and 3rd. Looking at season-to-date PPG this was recently tracking at 81-83 points, so to see 86-88 is surprising, albeit I understand this methodology is probably more nuanced in taking into account recent form.

Not saying this prediction won’t be accurate, and not particularly disagreeing, but it did prompt me to dive a bit deeper.

For 2nd and 3rd place teams to reach 89 and 88 points respectively, of the realistic contenders, it would require the following teams to have the following PPG record between now and the end of the season. (BTW I know this model isn’t about individual teams, but individual teams do actually have to play out the real-life scenario, and below are the ones who are realistically the most likely to do it)

Rovers: 2.38 PPG for 89 points, 2.31 PPG for 88.
Wimbledon: 2.28 PPG for 89, 2.21 PPG for 88.
Notts County: 2.28 PPG for 89, 2.21 PPG for 88.
Bradford: 2.28 PPG for 89, 2.21 PPG for 88.
Port Vale: 2.26 PPG for 89, 2.2 PPG for 88.


The one thing that’s been nagging at me since reading this is, only Walsall so far this season have averaged 2 PPG or more over the season. The rest of the runners and riders have been much more inconsistent.

I think the “last 8 games PPG” might be skewing this a bit. Maybe this makes it more accurate, or maybe it makes it less accurate: https://www.soccerstats.com/table.asp?league=england4&tid=re (if the link doesn’t work, find “relative form” table)

Notts County, Bradford, Rovers and Port Vale are all over performing their season-to-date PPG in the last 8 games by between 20-34%. But 14-15 games is a big chunk of the season (30% ish) - have any of these teams shown so far that they are likely to not only sustain that over the last 13-15 games, but also combine this with the previous 8, so effectively keep up the sort of run required to get to 88-89 points over the course of 21-23 games? It would take ages to do the maths on that which I haven’t got time to do, but it feels unlikely because if they had it in them, we’d have more teams closer to Walsall’s current tally surely?

Maybe they will. Surely that would be quite unusual though because it would mean those teams being in better-than-title-form for nearly half a season, in what feels like a division full of competitive but quite inconsistent teams? It seems to me like there is a chance this will settle down and we might find that the 5 teams in contention for 2nd/3rd place (assuming Walsall are already in a strong enough position to be near-certs) will drop back towards something resembling their season-long PPG over the run-in.

Using season-to-date PPG model here’s the projection, ordered this time in terms of highest PPG, not the PPG of the teams that are currently there:

1st: 94.76 points (2.06 PPG)
2nd: 81.88 points (1.78 PPG)
3rd: 81.88 points (1.78 PPG)
4th: 81.88 points (1.78 PPG)
5th: 81.42 points (1.77 PPG)
6th: 80.6 points (1.76 PPG)

Soccer Stats “projected points” table, which takes into account the strength of run-in opponents and home/away records, predicts the following expected points, in order of most to least:
Walsall: 93.38
Wimbledon: 83.26
Port Vale: 82.98
Bradford: 81.55
Rovers: 80.54
Notts: 79.50

This isn’t a million miles away from the above season-to-date PPG projection.

There is also the run-in to take into account. Here’s the “Opponents remaining PPG” for us and the teams around us:
Wimbledon: 1.30
Port Vale: 1.30
Bradford: 1.36
Rovers: 1.36
Notts: 1.44

Again, really close, but suggests we have a similar difficulty run-in to Bradford, slightly easier than Notts County, and slightly more difficult than Vale and Wimbledon.

Whichever way you look at it, it looks like it’s going to be incredibly tight. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if 2nd and 3rd place are decided on the final day.

[IDM]

Honestly, I'd be fine if we finished 4th,  and got a favourable tie in the play offs, with home advantage in the 2nd leg.

Feel we got cheated out of Wembley last season and I'm still gutted about that, and it's the best way to get promoted as we all know 

How were we cheated out of a Wembley appearance last season?  We lost 0-2 fair and square as far as i can recall, and a penalty shoot out is a lottery.

I don’t want to have to be in the play offs,  if that should now be an absolute minimum.

[drfchound]

Honestly, I'd be fine if we finished 4th,  and got a favourable tie in the play offs, with home advantage in the 2nd leg.

Feel we got cheated out of Wembley last season and I'm still gutted about that, and it's the best way to get promoted as we all know 

How were we cheated out of a Wembley appearance last season?  We lost 0-2 fair and square as far as i can recall, and a penalty shoot out is a lottery.

I don’t want to have to be in the play offs,  if that should now be an absolute minimum.

I’m not 100% sure I am remembering correctly but didn’t we have a couple of really decent pen shouts turned down late in the second leg match.

[ncRover]

You wanted it. Here it is. Although you probably won't like it....

Remember, to save a lot of very tiresome arguing again, this is NOT predicting who will finish where. It's predicting how many points each final position will end up with. Nothing magic about it, but with a couple of exceptions, it's generally getting the finishing points tallies right to within a couple or 3 points for 15 years now.

So, here's this evening's prediction.

1st place: 90
2nd 89
3rd 88
4th 85
5th 85
6th 82
7th 75
8th 70
9th 69
10th 65

Bit of a bugger if that's anywhere near. It means we'd need to win 10 of our final 13 to make the top 3.

88 points feels high for 3rd place, but there are a lot of teams with already slightly better ppg than us, and similar recent form. Personally, I think we are going to struggle to make the top 3, and this confirms it. We still don't and never have consistently looked like clearly one of the top three sides this season.

Interesting. Very surprised by the high predicted points totals for 2nd and 3rd. Looking at season-to-date PPG this was recently tracking at 81-83 points, so to see 86-88 is surprising, albeit I understand this methodology is probably more nuanced in taking into account recent form.

Not saying this prediction won’t be accurate, and not particularly disagreeing, but it did prompt me to dive a bit deeper.

For 2nd and 3rd place teams to reach 89 and 88 points respectively, of the realistic contenders, it would require the following teams to have the following PPG record between now and the end of the season. (BTW I know this model isn’t about individual teams, but individual teams do actually have to play out the real-life scenario, and below are the ones who are realistically the most likely to do it)

Rovers: 2.38 PPG for 89 points, 2.31 PPG for 88.
Wimbledon: 2.28 PPG for 89, 2.21 PPG for 88.
Notts County: 2.28 PPG for 89, 2.21 PPG for 88.
Bradford: 2.28 PPG for 89, 2.21 PPG for 88.
Port Vale: 2.26 PPG for 89, 2.2 PPG for 88.


The one thing that’s been nagging at me since reading this is, only Walsall so far this season have averaged 2 PPG or more over the season. The rest of the runners and riders have been much more inconsistent.

I think the “last 8 games PPG” might be skewing this a bit. Maybe this makes it more accurate, or maybe it makes it less accurate: https://www.soccerstats.com/table.asp?league=england4&tid=re (if the link doesn’t work, find “relative form” table)

Notts County, Bradford, Rovers and Port Vale are all over performing their season-to-date PPG in the last 8 games by between 20-34%. But 14-15 games is a big chunk of the season (30% ish) - have any of these teams shown so far that they are likely to not only sustain that over the last 13-15 games, but also combine this with the previous 8, so effectively keep up the sort of run required to get to 88-89 points over the course of 21-23 games? It would take ages to do the maths on that which I haven’t got time to do, but it feels unlikely because if they had it in them, we’d have more teams closer to Walsall’s current tally surely?

Maybe they will. Surely that would be quite unusual though because it would mean those teams being in better-than-title-form for nearly half a season, in what feels like a division full of competitive but quite inconsistent teams? It seems to me like there is a chance this will settle down and we might find that the 5 teams in contention for 2nd/3rd place (assuming Walsall are already in a strong enough position to be near-certs) will drop back towards something resembling their season-long PPG over the run-in.

Using season-to-date PPG model here’s the projection, ordered this time in terms of highest PPG, not the PPG of the teams that are currently there:

1st: 94.76 points (2.06 PPG)
2nd: 81.88 points (1.78 PPG)
3rd: 81.88 points (1.78 PPG)
4th: 81.88 points (1.78 PPG)
5th: 81.42 points (1.77 PPG)
6th: 80.6 points (1.76 PPG)

Soccer Stats “projected points” table, which takes into account the strength of run-in opponents and home/away records, predicts the following expected points, in order of most to least:
Walsall: 93.38
Wimbledon: 83.26
Port Vale: 82.98
Bradford: 81.55
Rovers: 80.54
Notts: 79.50

This isn’t a million miles away from the above season-to-date PPG projection.

There is also the run-in to take into account. Here’s the “Opponents remaining PPG” for us and the teams around us:
Wimbledon: 1.30
Port Vale: 1.30
Bradford: 1.36
Rovers: 1.36
Notts: 1.44

Again, really close, but suggests we have a similar difficulty run-in to Bradford, slightly easier than Notts County, and slightly more difficult than Vale and Wimbledon.

Whichever way you look at it, it looks like it’s going to be incredibly tight. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if 2nd and 3rd place are decided on the final day.

Great work.

Yes we have the most difficult run-in on paper compared to the teams that can overtake us with their games in hand.

Port Vake currently have a striker shortage though. Notts and Wimbledon aren’t blowing teams away. Bradford seem very solid, but I see Pattison went off in the first half who’s been an important player for them - could be out injured?

Average league table position of opposition remaining:

Port Vale 13.53

Wimbledon 12.4

Bradford 11.79

Notts  11.07

Doncaster 10.69

[pib]

You wanted it. Here it is. Although you probably won't like it....

Remember, to save a lot of very tiresome arguing again, this is NOT predicting who will finish where. It's predicting how many points each final position will end up with. Nothing magic about it, but with a couple of exceptions, it's generally getting the finishing points tallies right to within a couple or 3 points for 15 years now.

So, here's this evening's prediction.

1st place: 90
2nd 89
3rd 88
4th 85
5th 85
6th 82
7th 75
8th 70
9th 69
10th 65

Bit of a bugger if that's anywhere near. It means we'd need to win 10 of our final 13 to make the top 3.

88 points feels high for 3rd place, but there are a lot of teams with already slightly better ppg than us, and similar recent form. Personally, I think we are going to struggle to make the top 3, and this confirms it. We still don't and never have consistently looked like clearly one of the top three sides this season.

Interesting. Very surprised by the high predicted points totals for 2nd and 3rd. Looking at season-to-date PPG this was recently tracking at 81-83 points, so to see 86-88 is surprising, albeit I understand this methodology is probably more nuanced in taking into account recent form.

Not saying this prediction won’t be accurate, and not particularly disagreeing, but it did prompt me to dive a bit deeper.

For 2nd and 3rd place teams to reach 89 and 88 points respectively, of the realistic contenders, it would require the following teams to have the following PPG record between now and the end of the season. (BTW I know this model isn’t about individual teams, but individual teams do actually have to play out the real-life scenario, and below are the ones who are realistically the most likely to do it)

Rovers: 2.38 PPG for 89 points, 2.31 PPG for 88.
Wimbledon: 2.28 PPG for 89, 2.21 PPG for 88.
Notts County: 2.28 PPG for 89, 2.21 PPG for 88.
Bradford: 2.28 PPG for 89, 2.21 PPG for 88.
Port Vale: 2.26 PPG for 89, 2.2 PPG for 88.


The one thing that’s been nagging at me since reading this is, only Walsall so far this season have averaged 2 PPG or more over the season. The rest of the runners and riders have been much more inconsistent.

I think the “last 8 games PPG” might be skewing this a bit. Maybe this makes it more accurate, or maybe it makes it less accurate: https://www.soccerstats.com/table.asp?league=england4&tid=re (if the link doesn’t work, find “relative form” table)

Notts County, Bradford, Rovers and Port Vale are all over performing their season-to-date PPG in the last 8 games by between 20-34%. But 14-15 games is a big chunk of the season (30% ish) - have any of these teams shown so far that they are likely to not only sustain that over the last 13-15 games, but also combine this with the previous 8, so effectively keep up the sort of run required to get to 88-89 points over the course of 21-23 games? It would take ages to do the maths on that which I haven’t got time to do, but it feels unlikely because if they had it in them, we’d have more teams closer to Walsall’s current tally surely?

Maybe they will. Surely that would be quite unusual though because it would mean those teams being in better-than-title-form for nearly half a season, in what feels like a division full of competitive but quite inconsistent teams? It seems to me like there is a chance this will settle down and we might find that the 5 teams in contention for 2nd/3rd place (assuming Walsall are already in a strong enough position to be near-certs) will drop back towards something resembling their season-long PPG over the run-in.

Using season-to-date PPG model here’s the projection, ordered this time in terms of highest PPG, not the PPG of the teams that are currently there:

1st: 94.76 points (2.06 PPG)
2nd: 81.88 points (1.78 PPG)
3rd: 81.88 points (1.78 PPG)
4th: 81.88 points (1.78 PPG)
5th: 81.42 points (1.77 PPG)
6th: 80.6 points (1.76 PPG)

Soccer Stats “projected points” table, which takes into account the strength of run-in opponents and home/away records, predicts the following expected points, in order of most to least:
Walsall: 93.38
Wimbledon: 83.26
Port Vale: 82.98
Bradford: 81.55
Rovers: 80.54
Notts: 79.50

This isn’t a million miles away from the above season-to-date PPG projection.

There is also the run-in to take into account. Here’s the “Opponents remaining PPG” for us and the teams around us:
Wimbledon: 1.30
Port Vale: 1.30
Bradford: 1.36
Rovers: 1.36
Notts: 1.44

Again, really close, but suggests we have a similar difficulty run-in to Bradford, slightly easier than Notts County, and slightly more difficult than Vale and Wimbledon.

Whichever way you look at it, it looks like it’s going to be incredibly tight. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if 2nd and 3rd place are decided on the final day.

Great work.

Yes we have the most difficult run-in on paper compared to the teams that can overtake us with their games in hand.

Port Vake currently have a striker shortage though. Notts and Wimbledon aren’t blowing teams away. Bradford seem very solid, but I see Pattison went off in the first half who’s been an important player for them - could be out injured?

Average league table position of opposition remaining:

Port Vale 13.53

Wimbledon 12.4

Bradford 11.79

Notts  11.07

Doncaster 10.69

Bradford are excellent at home, but their away record isn’t as good at 14th best in the division, and 3 wins from 15 games.

[Iberian Red]

Love the BST end of season run-in totaliser thingy

So do I, but there are posters waiting to jump on and criticise every post he makes, probably thinks its not worth it

The evidence is here to see on four pages.

[ForsolongaRover]

Love the BST end of season run-in totaliser thingy

So do I, but there are posters waiting to jump on and criticise every post he makes, probably thinks its not worth it

This sort of analysis is endlessly fascinating. The effort that people put into it is admirable. I used to do it when my brain worked more efficiently, so it is joy to benefit from the work of others.
The evidence is here to see on four pages.

[TonySoprano]

Honestly, I'd be fine if we finished 4th,  and got a favourable tie in the play offs, with home advantage in the 2nd leg.

Feel we got cheated out of Wembley last season and I'm still gutted about that, and it's the best way to get promoted as we all know 

How were we cheated out of a Wembley appearance last season?  We lost 0-2 fair and square as far as i can recall, and a penalty shoot out is a lottery.

I don’t want to have to be in the play offs,  if that should now be an absolute minimum.

Calm yourself down fella, I'm saying it's how I felt given the circumstances, 10 in a row, being 2-0 up in the first leg, penalties at their end, and the antics of their goalkeeper, which was cheating in my opinion.

No way we are finishing top 3, 4th would be brilliant.

[drfchound]

Love the BST end of season run-in totaliser thingy

So do I, but there are posters waiting to jump on and criticise every post he makes, probably thinks its not worth it

Don’t count me in that group Filo.
I’m more than happy to read the predictions and see how they change over the ensuing weeks to their conclusions.

[DearneValleyRover]

I’m of the opinion that 84 points will be enough to get an automatic place.

[IDM]

Honestly, I'd be fine if we finished 4th,  and got a favourable tie in the play offs, with home advantage in the 2nd leg.

Feel we got cheated out of Wembley last season and I'm still gutted about that, and it's the best way to get promoted as we all know 

How were we cheated out of a Wembley appearance last season?  We lost 0-2 fair and square as far as i can recall, and a penalty shoot out is a lottery.

I don’t want to have to be in the play offs,  if that should now be an absolute minimum.

Calm yourself down fella, I'm saying it's how I felt given the circumstances, 10 in a row, being 2-0 up in the first leg, penalties at their end, and the antics of their goalkeeper, which was cheating in my opinion.

No way we are finishing top 3, 4th would be brilliant.

Perfectly calm thank you..

Disappointed yes, I get it, and frustrated.  But not cheated.

[Red wizard]

Now is the time we have to move up a gear. I still think we're in a good position for a automatic spot. I have a funny feeling Walsall will fall away as will another. Hopefully not us but it happens most seasons. You always get a team come from nowhere and challenge.