How many points will be needed?

[mikeyboy]

Well our excellent win yesterday at Bristol Rovers, put us on 35 points and Cambridge survived last season on 46. How many do you think would see us to safety this season?

[annable]

Feb 11, 2024 8:45:10 GMT mikeyboy said:

Well our excellent win yesterday at Bristol Rovers, put us on 35 points and Cambridge survived last season on 46. How many do you think would see us to safety this season?

I'm working on the assumption we will need 50 points as a minimum as I can't see 4th bottom averaging less than one point a game. I think it will be hard for the current bottom three to get more than 50 from where they are now but you never know where Fleetwood & Cheltenham are showing improved form.

I think that Port Vale, despite having two games in hand, look the current favourites for 4th bottom with Charlton not far behind(see one of their best players George Dobson is off to Hungary this week) although both could benefit from new manager bounces at some point.

I think Reading will be OK unless they get another points deduction and as for everybody else you can't see anybody at the moment being on a real nosedive to the bottom.

One things for sure it will go to the wire but i'm hoping that we will be mid table by them and just playing for pride although don't think MP will allow any foot being taken of the gas.

[mikeyboy]

Our home games against Carlisle, Cheltenham, Port Vale and Reading are going to be important. Orient, Cheltenham, Exeter, Wigan and Fleetwood away could bring some return as well. But we have some tough looking fixtures to negotiate.

[sinfinbovril]

Feb 11, 2024 9:49:24 GMT mikeyboy said:

Our home games against Carlisle, Cheltenham, Port Vale and Reading are going to be important. Orient, Cheltenham, Exeter, Wigan and Fleetwood away could bring some return as well. But we have some tough looking fixtures to negotiate.

I'm not a fan of football cliches - but those four home games are six-pointers and we have to win most of them. We're on 35? Win those four and we're safe on 47. Easy?!

[mikeyboy]

Looking at the bottom 4 today, if you project their current points totals forward both Cheltenham and Port Vale would finish short of 48 points, Fleetwood would finish on 37 and Carlisle 29. So I’d say that the magical 50 points would do it. So 12 needed currently.
Anyone think we will need more?

[bartonyellow]

Feb 18, 2024 12:26:56 GMT mikeyboy said:

Looking at the bottom 4 today, if you project their current points totals forward both Cheltenham and Port Vale would finish short of 48 points, Fleetwood would finish on 37 and Carlisle 29. So I’d say that the magical 50 points would do it. So 12 needed currently.
Anyone think we will need more?

Sounds logical.
If we can beat Carlisle and Cheltenham at home in the rearranged fixtures, then we are half way there.

[uttoxbrewer]

Thought I’d bring this thread back to the fore as we now move to the final two months of the season. Agree with the posters above I think 50 points should be enough this season but who knows? Looking at the current table I think it’s fair to say anyone currently in the top half is safe, and whilst anyone currently in the bottom half (Wigan 44 points and below) might be dragged into a relegation battle FWIW I think Wigan, Wycombe, Reading and Charlton will all stay up and finish top four of the bottom half, if that makes sense.

So that leaves eight teams left who are more involved in the relegation battle, some teams more vulnerable than others. Without wanting to put any curse on the teams we’ve still got left to play, rightly or wrongly this is how I see the rest of the season from this point.

Carlisle, despite beating us twice are too far adrift now. Would take a massive turnaround in form for them to stay up now.

Fleetwood, on their third manager of the season are now scoring goals and picking up points too. Not sure if their coming into form is too late but hope there’s at least a four point gap between them and us by the last game of the season.

Port Vale, with their new manager on a five and a half year contract haven’t had a new manager bounce. Yet! Our match against them on the 23rd will be pivotal for both clubs.

The rest of the teams in the mix, us, Exeter, Cambridge, Shrewsbury and Cheltenham are all picking up points here and there but also dropping silly points too and missing the chance to move away from the relegation places. Think the rest of the season will be a hold on tight ride from now on so hope the Brewers don’t bring me down and there’s some Mr Blue Sky between us and the bottom four at Seasons End.

[popsidepete59]

Mar 3, 2024 18:35:33 GMT uttoxbrewer said:

Thought I’d bring this thread back to the fore as we now move to the final two months of the season. Agree with the posters above I think 50 points should be enough this season but who knows? Looking at the current table I think it’s fair to say anyone currently in the top half is safe, and whilst anyone currently in the bottom half (Wigan 44 points and below) might be dragged into a relegation battle FWIW I think Wigan, Wycombe, Reading and Charlton will all stay up and finish top four of the bottom half, if that makes sense.

So that leaves eight teams left who are more involved in the relegation battle, some teams more vulnerable than others. Without wanting to put any curse on the teams we’ve still got left to play, rightly or wrongly this is how I see the rest of the season from this point.

Carlisle, despite beating us twice are too far adrift now. Would take a massive turnaround in form for them to stay up now.

Fleetwood, on their third manager of the season are now scoring goals and picking up points too. Not sure if their coming into form is too late but hope there’s at least a four point gap between them and us by the last game of the season.

Port Vale, with their new manager on a five and a half year contract haven’t had a new manager bounce. Yet! Our match against them on the 23rd will be pivotal for both clubs.

The rest of the teams in the mix, us, Exeter, Cambridge, Shrewsbury and Cheltenham are all picking up points here and there but also dropping silly points too and missing the chance to move away from the relegation places. Think the rest of the season will be a hold on tight ride from now on so hope the Brewers don’t bring me down and there’s some Mr Blue Sky between us and the bottom four at Seasons End.

Now you're talking, Jeff Lynn and ELO, amazing band, saw them live at Wembley Arena on their Time tour👍
Back to the football, I'd hope 50 points would be suffice, think it will go down to the wire?

[uttoxbrewer]

Mar 3, 2024 18:53:20 GMT popsidepete59 said:

Mar 3, 2024 18:35:33 GMT uttoxbrewer said:

Thought I’d bring this thread back to the fore as we now move to the final two months of the season. Agree with the posters above I think 50 points should be enough this season but who knows? Looking at the current table I think it’s fair to say anyone currently in the top half is safe, and whilst anyone currently in the bottom half (Wigan 44 points and below) might be dragged into a relegation battle FWIW I think Wigan, Wycombe, Reading and Charlton will all stay up and finish top four of the bottom half, if that makes sense.

So that leaves eight teams left who are more involved in the relegation battle, some teams more vulnerable than others. Without wanting to put any curse on the teams we’ve still got left to play, rightly or wrongly this is how I see the rest of the season from this point.

Carlisle, despite beating us twice are too far adrift now. Would take a massive turnaround in form for them to stay up now.

Fleetwood, on their third manager of the season are now scoring goals and picking up points too. Not sure if their coming into form is too late but hope there’s at least a four point gap between them and us by the last game of the season.

Port Vale, with their new manager on a five and a half year contract haven’t had a new manager bounce. Yet! Our match against them on the 23rd will be pivotal for both clubs.

The rest of the teams in the mix, us, Exeter, Cambridge, Shrewsbury and Cheltenham are all picking up points here and there but also dropping silly points too and missing the chance to move away from the relegation places. Think the rest of the season will be a hold on tight ride from now on so hope the Brewers don’t bring me down and there’s some Mr Blue Sky between us and the bottom four at Seasons End.

Now you're talking, Jeff Lynn and ELO, amazing band, saw them live at Wembley Arena on their Time tour👍
Back to the football, I'd hope 50 points would be suffice, think it will go down to the wire?

The Time tour must have been early 1980’s? Yep top band who’ve stood the test of time, finally got to see them as the most recent format Jeff Lynnes ELO in 2016.

FAO Admin apologies for going O/T and hope this doesn’t cause any confusion

[sinfinbovril]

Mar 3, 2024 18:53:20 GMT popsidepete59 said:

Now you're talking, Jeff Lynn and ELO, amazing band, saw them live at Wembley Arena on their Time tour👍
Back to the football, I'd hope 50 points would be suffice, think it will go down to the wire?

Manic Street Preachers - now you're talking!

PS Seen them four times - Rock City twice, Derby Assembly Rooms & Brum O2.

[sinfinbovril]

My sensible comment on this thread is that I think it's going to be unexpected results all the way after those two away wins and two poor home defeats.

We've been fighting relegation for what feels like years (even going back to the Championship seasons) and I can't believe we'll go down. But someone has to.

Let's have a look:
Home - Posh, Port Vale, Barnsley, Oxford, Cheltenham & Reading
Away - Portsmouth, Exeter, Wigan, Stevenage & Fleetwood

Port Vale - I hate playing Port Vale and with the stakes so high, I already feel sick.

Nope - no easy games. Not that that counts for anything - Carlisle at home anyone? I notice they're back to their losing ways...

I've a feeling there's going to be a lot of draws. Other than that, I'd rather not look and can someone tell me when it's all over, please.

[mikeyboy]

Well looking at it today and using my simple formula of projecting forward form this season to 46 games. Cheltenham will finish on 46, Port Vale on 43, Fleetwood on 40 and Carlisle on 29. So 49 would do it for us but there is no taking account of ‘new manager bounce’ or any margin for error. We would be projected to finish on 51, but that doesn’t take into account us offloading our experienced strikers.

[annable]

I still think 50 points will be required to survive where everybody apart from the bottom three are averaging above a point a game. The key game for me is tomorrow night when Cheltenham play Charlton and a home win then brings virtually the whole of the bottom half into striking distance of fourth bottom. Actually, if you look at the points accrued within the last 5 games for the bottom half teams(easy to see on BBC website via L1 table) then Cheltenham have the most with 8 points and then it's us and a couple of others on 7 points so we are doing well in comparison to others although it doesn't feel like it sometimes.

I think the bottom three will struggle to stay up from this point although you may not think it with Fleetwood picking up some points and Port Vale having games in hand. I keep close tabs on Port Vale with working in Stoke and to be honest their fans(negative at the best of times) are now worried about relegation to the National League given the blinkered view their owner seems to have with their Director of Football. They didn't recruit in January and some players appear to have downed tools and although they have appointed a decent, on paper, manager in Darren Moore arguably things have got worse. To think when we won our first game of the season at their place in September a point would have taken them top! Massive drop off since then masked by some decent cup wins.

It might sound an obvious thing to say but I think the key to surviving will be teams abilities to score enough goals. Whilst we are stronger than most defensively there are question marks over our attacking abilities and the apparent policy of trying to grind our way out of trouble is a risky one. Time will tell and the next two games will be hard to keep clean sheets in but you never know. Nervous times ahead!

[mikeyboy]

Mar 4, 2024 8:40:07 GMT annable said:

I still think 50 points will be required to survive where everybody apart from the bottom three are averaging above a point a game. The key game for me is tomorrow night when Cheltenham play Charlton and a home win then brings virtually the whole of the bottom half into striking distance of fourth bottom. Actually, if you look at the points accrued within the last 5 games for the bottom half teams(easy to see on BBC website via L1 table) then Cheltenham have the most with 8 points and then it's us and a couple of others on 7 points so we are doing well in comparison to others although it doesn't feel like it sometimes.

I think the bottom three will struggle to stay up from this point although you may not think it with Fleetwood picking up some points and Port Vale having games in hand. I keep close tabs on Port Vale with working in Stoke and to be honest their fans(negative at the best of times) are now worried about relegation to the National League given the blinkered view their owner seems to have with their Director of Football. They didn't recruit in January and some players appear to have downed tools and although they have appointed a decent, on paper, manager in Darren Moore arguably things have got worse. To think when we won our first game of the season at their place in September a point would have taken them top! Massive drop off since then masked by some decent cup wins.

It might sound an obvious thing to say but I think the key to surviving will be teams abilities to score enough goals. Whilst we are stronger than most defensively there are question marks over our attacking abilities and the apparent policy of trying to grind our way out of trouble is a risky one. Time will tell and the next two games will be hard to keep clean sheets in but you never know. Nervous times ahead!

It’s going to be nail biting stuff annable, that’s for sure and for me, not Martin’s fault. The shipping out of experienced strikers was already underway. But I fear you maybe right, that the teams who score goals will be ok. What’s the chances of a goalscorer emerging for us?

[annable]

Mar 4, 2024 8:47:07 GMT mikeyboy said:

Mar 4, 2024 8:40:07 GMT annable said:

I still think 50 points will be required to survive where everybody apart from the bottom three are averaging above a point a game. The key game for me is tomorrow night when Cheltenham play Charlton and a home win then brings virtually the whole of the bottom half into striking distance of fourth bottom. Actually, if you look at the points accrued within the last 5 games for the bottom half teams(easy to see on BBC website via L1 table) then Cheltenham have the most with 8 points and then it's us and a couple of others on 7 points so we are doing well in comparison to others although it doesn't feel like it sometimes.

I think the bottom three will struggle to stay up from this point although you may not think it with Fleetwood picking up some points and Port Vale having games in hand. I keep close tabs on Port Vale with working in Stoke and to be honest their fans(negative at the best of times) are now worried about relegation to the National League given the blinkered view their owner seems to have with their Director of Football. They didn't recruit in January and some players appear to have downed tools and although they have appointed a decent, on paper, manager in Darren Moore arguably things have got worse. To think when we won our first game of the season at their place in September a point would have taken them top! Massive drop off since then masked by some decent cup wins.

It might sound an obvious thing to say but I think the key to surviving will be teams abilities to score enough goals. Whilst we are stronger than most defensively there are question marks over our attacking abilities and the apparent policy of trying to grind our way out of trouble is a risky one. Time will tell and the next two games will be hard to keep clean sheets in but you never know. Nervous times ahead!

It’s going to be nail biting stuff annable, that’s for sure and for me, not Martin’s fault. The shipping out of experienced strikers was already underway. But I fear you maybe right, that the teams who score goals will be ok. What’s the chances of a goalscorer emerging for us?

Joe Hugill looks most likely to me of the new forwards to be able to score but one things for sure unless they are actually on the pitch then that won't happen! Take Saturday for instance two of the four forwards signed in January didn't feature and one got on for 15 minutes so with that amount of pitch time we aren't going to see much. I accept Saturday was a must not lose game and to that extent we achieved the minimum we were looking for. We will certainly need to see some more firepower in the next two should be want any points.

[sinfinbovril]

Ademola is good at the flick-ons but there's never anyone there. Take a man out of defence (needs must?) and put Hugill in for a couple of games. He's done pretty well, feeding off scraps.

He's the one most likely to make something happen.

[mikeyboy]

Happily we have maintained our 5 point lead over Cheltenham tonight as they were beaten 1-3 at home by Charlton. Charlton edge ahead but with their heavy level of investment and new manager, it was probably to be expected.

[annable]

Mar 5, 2024 21:59:32 GMT mikeyboy said:

Happily we have maintained our 5 point lead over Cheltenham tonight as they were beaten 1-3 at home by Charlton. Charlton edge ahead but with their heavy level of investment and new manager, it was probably to be expected.

An ideal result last night which as you say keeps the gap at 5 points and Cheltenham remain at arms length from us and crucially seem to be dropping off a bit. There is no doubt they have scaled a mountain to get where they are but currently are just struggling to get over the top and have gone four without a win now(2D, 2L) which is benefiting us. I'm not too worried about Charlton going ahead of us where although they are only 2 points clear and we have 2 games in hand they have turned a corner under Nathan Jones and I expect them to finish top of the bottom half. 

Going back to Cheltenham I took a look at their remaining fixtures and their next 3 are really tough(Oxford away, Barnsley away and Peterborough at home) and whilst you never know I am hoping they lose all those so anything we can pick up will be a bonus. Our next two certainly are very difficult so fingers crossed that if we do lose both(bit negative I know) then the gap will remain the same. For me, it's just about ticking those games off now, keeping our heads above water and staying in the division. I know MP says we are hunting the teams above us but that's all a bit bullish and saying the right things rather than reality. Fair play to him but guess what Martin, everybody else is looking behind at this stage!

[sinfinbovril]

We've got to play them three too. Its not gonna be easy.

[Ilson Brewer]

It’s 50. It’s always 50.