The Much Awaited Return of Promotion Maths

[Richard E]

They'll all lose matches, as they all have done.

Yes. While it feels like it's virtually the end of the season, there's actually the best part of a quarter of it left. Everyone will drop points.

[aj2k77]

No chance Villa, Cardiff and Fulham will all reach 90 points.

[Nastylee]

There's no point trying to second guess what will happen otherwise we'd never have drawn at home to Boro, Brentford, Milwall, etc. This division throws up stupid results and over the last 6 games Fulham are only one point better off. So despite everyone shitting the bed, we're actually keeping the pace ourselves. Milwall, who have the same form as the mighty Fulham, failed to beat the crappest team in the division today. Ultimately, it will boil down to the points we get out of Wolves, Cardiff and Derby. Come out of those ok and you'd fancy us to stick another 6+ wins out of the others. Everyone just needs to hold their nerve.

[QuintonVilla]

Wolves will beat us, too much pace in their team for our defence. Makes the Sunderland game even bigger imo, we HAVE to win that.

[Nastylee]

error, can be deleted.

[Ads]

Wolves will beat us, too much pace in their team for our defence. Makes the Sunderland game even bigger imo, we HAVE to win that.

No they don't. Pace didn't beat us, space did. We afforded Neves room second half as he dropped deeper to allow the other midfield runners space in behind, as one of our two had to close him. He's a good player and he punished us. But we lost the game second half in midfield because of better game management.

[SoccerHQ]

Wolves game will be a draw I think. I'm not too concerned about that one. It's not beating Sunderland or QPR that are the results that would cost us second.

[curiousorange]

Any team looking to go up (or stay up, for that matter) should recognise the danger of "should win" games. Beating Wolves would be great but unless it comes between wins against Sunderland and QPR it will probably be a phyrric victory. That's what Cardiff are doing really well and what Fulham aren't really doing as yet.

[maidstonevillain]

Any team looking to go up (or stay up, for that matter) should recognise the danger of "should win" games. Beating Wolves would be great but unless it comes between wins against Sunderland and QPR it will probably be a phyrric victory. That's what Cardiff are doing really well and what Fulham aren't really doing as yet.

Lets hope Cardiff don't do it well this month. They have three pretty easy "should win" games.

[IFWaters]

If you look at form of top 8 since Christmas Day, ie last 11 or 12 games depending on postponements :

Fulham - 30 points from 12
Us - 25 from 11
Cardiff - 20 from 11
Boro - 20 from 12
Wolves - 19 from 11
Preston - 18 from 12
Sheff Utd - 17 from 11
Derby - 16 from 12
Bristol C - 13 from 12

there are other teams on good from - Millwall 23 from 12 games, but they are too far behind.

[sickbeggar]

Thing is, we've got 3 away games this month. All against teams struggling at the bottom but all who will be fighting for their lives. As i said on a earlier post, we have to be in striking difference by the end of the month to take advantage of cardiff's perceived hard run of games in April. Now if you're a team in 3rd, you'd expect to pick up 7 points minimum from those games. Add in the qpr game and wolves and you'd hope for 11 points overall minimum or 74 points at the end of March (maybe 71 if the qpr game hasn't been played). Obviously that target relies on Cardiff playing like a team in 2nd place. 71 or 74 points at that stage would be on target and not exactly incredible form so if we're under the 73 point barrier (5 games played) or 70 point barrier (4 games played) by then i'd say we've blown it and don't deserve to go up

[cdbearsfan]

Gonna have to win the next two to stay in it. We will be, at least, eight points behind Cardiff going into the Wolves game so that'll be a real test of bottle. You can guarantee they'll try a lot harder against us than they did against Fulham.

[Richard]

How will be at least 8 points behind Cardiff before the Wolves game ?

[KRS]

Not sure unless Cardiff are due to be given at least another 4pts between now and next weekend...or do they get at least 7pts if they beat Barnsley on the same night we only get 3pts if we beat Sunderland?

[SoccerHQ]

Think he means 7. If we both win on Tuesday and then they beat SHA on Saturday.