Play Off Chase

[2Morrow]

4 Points off sixth

45 points to play for (15 Games left)

Plausible again? Or ready for another crumble?

I fall on the side that a club with the resources we have at our disposable should really be able to do it.

 

[LGTL]

Nine teams going for one spot really. Unlikely but possible I guess. 

[Saint Troy]

2 minutes ago, LGTL said:

Nine teams going for one spot really. Unlikely but possible I guess. 

11 perhaps with the two with a game in hand! 

[Crab Lungs]

Entirely possible but … I fear we are some way off the top five in the league, going on our showings vs them. Could squeak in though…

[CB Fry]

We need to win a serious number of games. 

"4 points off sixth" is written like that's not much.

It's fucking loads, especially when there are 7 other teams above us and closer than we are.

We win our next 2 in a row - 5 wins out of 6, 4 straight wins, 49 points - and we will still be way off sixth. Maybe we'd be 8th, more likely 9th or 10th.

It's not impossible but the run we need to go on is very difficult. It will be relentless.

[SNSUN]

The last 3 (for a sample size) 6th place finishers finished on 69, 73 and 68 points. 

So we possibly need 25 to 30 points to finish 6th. 9 to 10-ish wins from 15 games, possibly 8 with some draws. I think it's beyond us unless we remain consistent and keep finding ways to win. Consistency and dropping points have been our achilles heel this season. I think only Wrexham and Derby have dropped more points than us from winning positions, both play off hopefuls. 

[LoyalSaintSO50]

Still got hope. Some winnable games coming up. Today was the one I thought we’d come unstuck and at half time didn’t see us winning. Then, bullet header, keep the faith 😇

[Chez]

14 minutes ago, CB Fry said:

We need to win a serious number of games. 

"4 points off sixth" is written like that's not much.

It's fucking loads, especially when there are 7 other teams above us and closer than we are.

We win our next 2 in a row - 5 wins out of 6, 4 straight wins, 49 points - and we will still be way off sixth. Maybe we'd be 8th, more likely 9th or 10th.

It's not impossible but the run we need to go on is very difficult. It will be relentless.

But once you start winning it can become a habit.

If you have decent players, a decent plan and the all important confidence, then you can become unstoppable. One defeat and it could all go to shit mind, but maybe it never happens. Maybe.

[goodymatt]

6 minutes ago, SNSUN said:

The last 3 (for a sample size) 6th place finishers finished on 69, 73 and 68 points. 

So we possibly need 25 to 30 points to finish 6th. 9 to 10-ish wins from 15 games, possibly 8 with some draws. I think it's beyond us unless we remain consistent and keep finding ways to win. Consistency and dropping points have been our achilles heel this season. I think only Wrexham and Derby have dropped more points than us from winning positions, both play off hopefuls. 

We are averaging 63.8 points over the season so far and that includes 2 big stretches where we only won 1 game. 70 plus points doesn’t feel beyond us if we can avoid going on a third shocking run. But can we?!

[Football Special]

17 minutes ago, CB Fry said:

We need to win a serious number of games. 

"4 points off sixth" is written like that's not much.

It's fucking loads, especially when there are 7 other teams above us and closer than we are.

We win our next 2 in a row - 5 wins out of 6, 4 straight wins, 49 points - and we will still be way off sixth. Maybe we'd be 8th, more likely 9th or 10th.

It's not impossible but the run we need to go on is very difficult. It will be relentless.

Agreed, ultimately we're still bottom half of the table, no point looking too far ahead until we at least get into top half of the table , see where we are end of the month 

[StrangelyBrown]

Possible, but unlikely given the run we would need to go on.

Having said that we've made a good start - I thought we needed 10 wins from 16. 1 down with 15 to go.

[Lee On Solent Saint]

With the number of teams still involved in a play off chase, a few are going to suffer a drop in form at some point. Smaller squad size will play a part too. Teams are taking points of each other as well. 

[Scummer]

I could see us getting to 70 points, that's basically a continuation of the points per game we've achieved since Tonda took charge

[Sir Ralph]

We have plenty of winnable games in the next few months. Beat Leicester on Tuesday and we have a nice run, subject to players having the right mentality 

[Gloucester Saint]

It’s a long shot still but win the next couple and it gets interesting.

[Ted Bates Statue]

My stance on this is we are still 14th. Not even top half yet. But let's have a bit of fun and dream.

So what would our route into the play-offs look like? ok we are currently still last in our mini-league of 9. But we've beaten Stoke and Watford in the last week so that's a good start.

We have five more six-pointers starting with QPR coming up soon. The next four come in our last six matches of the season: Wrexham, Derby, Bristol City and finally Preston away on the last day. I'd say all are must-wins but Wrexham away is the biggest as it stands and we've only gained one point on them since Tonda's appointment.

We have eight fixtures remaining against the current bottom nine sides. The bottom five - West Brom, Leicester, Blackburn, Oxford, Wednesday should all be beatable although sides like these can always spring results towards the end of the season, especially if they have a sniff of survival. We're not great away so I could see us dropping points against West Brom and Swansea. Norwich have also been in very good form since Clement took over.

Apart from that, Coventry and Ipswich would be bonuses, confidence-boosters if we get results off them especially if they fail to secure automatic promotion and we face them in the play-offs.

So to summarise, there are five specific fixtures that I'd consider to be must-wins, and then beat a good proportion of the lower-table sides to get around 30-35 points and get into the top 6, by winning 5 of the last 7 as we did in 06-07. It's a lot to ask as I think we're about 7 points behind where we need to be right now. We could easily draw a few, lose a couple, some first XI injuries in a long season and suddenly it's season over before the end of April.

We are in decent form and with a settled side, let's see about getting into the top ten first and see where things take us. 

Edited 4 hours ago by Ted Bates Statue

[Baird of the land]

I can see a heartbreaking loss to Preston on the final day in our future.

[AlexLaw76]

We have left it too late. Too much to do I am afraid 

[gammon cheeks]

We will finish 6th is my prediction 

[SouSaint]

5 minutes ago, Baird of the land said:

I can see a heartbreaking loss to Preston on the final day in our future.

Wouldn't be so bad. Sport Republic would only serve us up another embarrassing season if we somehow fluked a play off win. 

[macca155]

It's a pretty tall order, 9 wins (or equivalent) the very minimum. If they can get some momentum, the gap will shrink pretty quickly, and the other teams will be wary of Saints.

Good news is Saints are hitting a run of fixtures against sides below them in the table. QPR the exception. They should be able to get some form going with those games.

Then its Coventry, Ipswich, Wrexham, and Derby. That's where the season will be defined.

Probably not worth even thinking about it until Saints are knocking on the door.

They aren't making up 15 points to the autos. I think we can be sure of that.

[JohnnyShearer2.0]

I can see Hull tailing off a little so it might be 2 places up for grabs.

[Saint Fan CaM]

It would be tough enough even if the teams above us didn’t win a point while we climbed up. But obviously that’s not going to happen - there’s every likelihood that 6 teams will win as many points as us, or more. Plus there are teams just below us that could start picking up points too. So a play off place is possible, but highly unlikely.

[saintwbu]

For some context, Coventry would be 5th in the table right now in the season we went up with Ipswich and Leicester. This league is not at the level of what it was two seasons ago. 5 teams between us and the playoffs have dropped points this weekend. If we keep winning games, we make the play offs.

[Willo of Whiteley]

Teams will be taking points off each other in the play off mix, and March is I’d normally the time when the relegation threatened teams start to pull their finger out too.

It’s going to be an interesting one.

[Willo of Whiteley]

I reckon you need maybe 25-28 more points to make the play offs.

Being brutally honest and despite or recent showing, I still don’t see us getting that, we’re way too inconsistent and fragile when the going gets tough. We tend to have to rely on a terrible team to let us win to get us back on track.

[die Mannyschaft]

Its out of Saints hands. At this stage its how may points can teams above us lose but not losing to teams below us closely doing help either if we draw. 

We are relying on team below us to take points off teams above us but that won't happen for sll teams like Preston beat Pompey.  Bristol,  Millwall and Birmingham also won and have not really gained much. 

Can Saints really get another 8,9 or 10 wins. Its like the great escape but in reverse. We were very lucky today. Can we get away with stupid back pass blunders and opposition missing sitters for 8 games.