Play Off Contenders

[NewquayRed]

Odd line up as it stands, not sure many would have predicted that even a month or so ago. Gutted that we’re only a few wins away from being in the mix.

Can’t believe Luton or Cov could make the Prem this year ! 

[weepywall]

I was surprised to see Sunderland in 6th place, they seem to have quietly climbed the table.

[TonyTonyTony]

2 hours ago, weepywall said:

I was surprised to see Sunderland in 6th place, they seem to have quietly climbed the table.

I think they have the momentum as well. Not sure who they have to play in their final games, but i can see a Middlesborough - Sunderland final.

As for City, its really only 3 or 4 extra wins and we'd be up there in with a shout. I can easily think of 3 or 4 games we "should" have won

Edited April 28, 2023 by TonyTonyTony

[Midred]

2 hours ago, weepywall said:

I was surprised to see Sunderland in 6th place, they seem to have quietly climbed the table.

It will be "back where they belong"!

[TonyTonyTony]

10 minutes ago, Midred said:

It will be "back where they belong"!

To be fair they are more of a PL side than a team like Bournemouth

[ExiledAjax]

40 minutes ago, TonyTonyTony said:

I think they have the momentum as well. Not sure who they have to play in their final games, but i can see a Middlesborough - Sunderland final.

As for City, its really only 3 or 4 extra wins and we'd be up there in with a shout. I can easily think of 3 or 4 games we "should" have won

3 or 4 net wins.

Or increasing our number of wins by nearly 30% (at time of writing).

It's easy to say but much much harder to execute and realise.

My own analysis is that we are perhaps 4 points worse of than we reasonably "could" or "should" be. That puts us on 60 which assuming other teams broadly perform the same moves us up one place to 13th. 

So I believe this is a pretty fair season for us and we are largely where we should be withing this division.

Edited April 28, 2023 by ExiledAjax

[cidercity1987]

Slowly but surely the play off positions are coming to reflect the actual performances of the teams and the goal difference.

Blackburn are not a play off level team and were always in a false position due to winning and losing (3 points) instead of ever drawing (2 points).

The three most consistent teams  chasing 5th and 6th are Coventry, Sunderland, Millwall and I hope two of those make it. What a farce it would be if someone like Preston got in with a massive negative GD.

[Sir Geoff]

As long as West Brom (another club that think they 'deserve' to be in the Premier League), don't make itthen I will be happy.

Also going to be interesting to see what happens re their finances next year without parachute payments.

[Davefevs]

5 minutes ago, Sir Geoff said:

As long as West Brom (another club that think they 'deserve' to be in the Premier League), don't make itthen I will be happy.

Also going to be interesting to see what happens re their finances next year without parachute payments.

As it stands, with Burnley and Sheffield United promoted whilst receiving PPs, there will only be 2 teams left with PPs next season (plus the 3 who come down):

• Norwich City
• Watford

Both of whom were on 2 year PPs for going straight back down, last time they went up, so next season will be their final season of PPs.  Pressure on!

As you say West Brom’s PPs run out this summer.  Hope they stay down.

[Lanterne Rouge]

Incredible that everyone from Coventry in 5th down to Watford in 13th have a chance (in Watford`s case a very slim one) of making the last two playoff places with only two games left.

[Kodjias Wrist]

7 hours ago, NewquayRed said:

Can’t believe Luton or Cov could make the Prem this year ! 

I was pissed when Cardiff and Swansea got there. Bit jealous of Huddersfield amd Blackpool when they got there and I find myself again bewildered how Preston Luton and Coventry can make playoffs. Even more impressive is after a dodgy start this season, Luton find themselves as good as they were last season!

The prem will use this to play down the dominance of parachute payments if one of Preston, Cov and Luton go up.

Edited April 28, 2023 by Kodjias Wrist

[TonyTonyTony]

1 hour ago, Davefevs said:

As it stands, with Burnley and Sheffield United promoted whilst receiving PPs, there will only be 2 teams left with PPs next season (plus the 3 who come down):

• Norwich City
• Watford

Interesting that. Both have been streaky this year. They can't splash too much to improve if they are in their final year. Next season could be a very level playing field (and im not talking about the pitch at AG)

[freezer]

I'm hoping Millwall make and win the play offs. 

[Rocking Red Cyril]

Have missed something is? Are relegated clubs from prem not getting pay outs any more ?

[Wanderingred]

4 hours ago, freezer said:

I'm hoping Millwall make and win the play offs. 

Either Luton or Millwall would be good to rough up some of those pampered Premier League stars! They wouldn’t fancy a trip to either for sure…

[W-S-M Seagull]

16 hours ago, ExiledAjax said:

3 or 4 net wins.

Or increasing our number of wins by nearly 30% (at time of writing).

It's easy to say but much much harder to execute and realise.

My own analysis is that we are perhaps 4 points worse of than we reasonably "could" or "should" be. That puts us on 60 which assuming other teams broadly perform the same moves us up one place to 13th. 

So I believe this is a pretty fair season for us and we are largely where we should be withing this division.

We missed out on 3 points at home to Sheffield Utd due to a ref that lost complete control. 

Missed out on winning at Hull away again due to an incompetent ref performance.

Wigan away they should have seen a red...

I could go on and on.

[ExiledAjax]

27 minutes ago, W-S-M Seagull said:

We missed out on 3 points at home to Sheffield Utd due to a ref that lost complete control. 

Missed out on winning at Hull away again due to an incompetent ref performance.

Wigan away they should have seen a red...

I could go on and on.

We've discussed this before. In my opinion you're being a little biased and are assuming that an improvement in refereeing standards could, should, and would be limited to Bristol City alone.

What about decisions that went for us? They're not as memorable but they will have happened. IIRC there was one where Dasilva could have given away a penalty but ref played on.

If we allow ourselves some more generous/accurate refereeing then we must allow other teams the same. So would all teams gain points? What does that do to the table?

Imo you cannot reasonably isolate us and say "we should have X more points because referees are crap, and therefore we are really a top 8 side". 

We've played pretty average football all season and are in a pretty average position because of that.

[Sandhurst Red]

The bigger frustration for me has been that this season has been a very average, I'd even argue poor, standard.

Any of the teams coming down from the Prem will be strong, and you'd argue that League One will be sending up teams with genuine quality and depth.

The championship will be a harder legaue next season. 

[Laner]

2 hours ago, Wanderingred said:

Either Luton or Millwall would be good to rough up some of those pampered Premier League stars! They wouldn’t fancy a trip to either for sure…

With VAR there to protect them, I'd doubt they'd worry too much.

[Betty Swallocks]

17 hours ago, Davefevs said:

As it stands, with Burnley and Sheffield United promoted whilst receiving PPs, there will only be 2 teams left with PPs next season (plus the 3 who come down):

• Norwich City
• Watford

Both of whom were on 2 year PPs for going straight back down, last time they went up, so next season will be their final season of PPs.  Pressure on!

As you say West Brom’s PPs run out this summer.  Hope they stay down.

Lots of talk that West Brom could be in whole world of shit should they not get promoted this season.

Will be interesting to see what happens there over the summer. 

[Harry]

This run of fixtures below was the problem. 
At the start of the season I’d have settled for lower-mid table. But on reflection I think this year has been the poorest championship season we’ve seen in many years. Every team we’ve faced at the Gate I’ve gone home thinking “well they weren’t anything special”. 
There are a number of very poor teams, a big number of very average teams, and really only 1 good team. 
In hindsight I think this season, despite all of our financial problems, has been a missed opportunity. 
 

I look back to that run of fixtures between October and the new year and think what might have been. 
It was clear to a lot of fans during this period that we needed to get away from the 3 / 5 at the back. There were some odd things happening during that period, ranging from Klose’s form, King at centre back, Scott not being played in his best role, Weimann at wing back and numerous others. 
Once we switched to 4 at the back and played our best player in his best role, we improved. 
I just look back and wonder, had we changed it up earlier, that poor run of 1 win in 10 and 3 wins in 18 might be the difference between us making a playoff challenge. 
It’s a very very poor standard this season and I actually think that the way we’ve been playing this last couple of months would’ve had us up there had we played this way all season. 

Edited April 29, 2023 by Harry

[spudski]

51 minutes ago, Harry said:

This run of fixtures below was the problem. 
At the start of the season I’d have settled for lower-mid table. But on reflection I think this year has been the poorest championship season we’ve seen in many years. Every team we’ve faced at the Gate I’ve gone home thinking “well they weren’t anything special”. 
There are a number of very poor teams, a big number of very average teams, and really only 1 good team. 
In hindsight I think this season, despite all of our financial problems, has been a missed opportunity. 
 

I look back to that run of fixtures between October and the new year and think what might have been. 
It was clear to a lot of fans during this period that we needed to get away from the 3 / 5 at the back. There were some odd things happening during that period, ranging from Klose’s form, King at centre back, Scott not being played in his best role, Weimann at wing back and numerous others. 
Once we switched to 4 at the back and played our best player in his best role, we improved. 
I just look back and wonder, had we changed it up earlier, that poor run of 1 win in 10 and 3 wins in 18 might be the difference between us making a playoff challenge. 
It’s a very very poor standard this season and I actually think that the way we’ve been playing this last couple of months would’ve had us up there had we played this way all season. 

I agree with that Harry. It's been very average across the whole league. 

A friend of mine who's been a lifetime season ticket holder at Sheff Utd can't believe they are going up. 

He said they've been really lucky all season. Haven't played particularly good football or controlled games. He said when playing us, we were the team that looked more like the promotion hopeful. 

With their now financial cash flow problems and questionable ownership, I can see them coming straight back down with a very low points return. 

Sadly a season opportunity missed for us. 

[Bedred31]

We’ve only lost one more game than Milwall who are in 5th and two more than Middlesbrough in 4th. The difference is the win/draw ratio. We’ve drawn 14- 1 more than Wigan who are bottom .I think we underestimate how well Pearson has done in making us gritty, resilient and harder to beat. Next step is to be more potent in the final third.

[ScottishRed]

1 hour ago, Bedred31 said:

We’ve only lost one more game than Milwall who are in 5th and two more than Middlesbrough in 4th. The difference is the win/draw ratio. We’ve drawn 14- 1 more than Wigan who are bottom .I think we underestimate how well Pearson has done in making us gritty, resilient and harder to beat. Next step is to be more potent in the final third.

I think our potency in the final third is there but it’s inconsistent. That should improve.

What we truly need to do is stop losing stupid goals - much easier said than done.

[cityexile]

2 hours ago, Harry said:

This run of fixtures below was the problem. 
At the start of the season I’d have settled for lower-mid table. But on reflection I think this year has been the poorest championship season we’ve seen in many years. Every team we’ve faced at the Gate I’ve gone home thinking “well they weren’t anything special”. 
There are a number of very poor teams, a big number of very average teams, and really only 1 good team. 
In hindsight I think this season, despite all of our financial problems, has been a missed opportunity. 
 

I look back to that run of fixtures between October and the new year and think what might have been. 
It was clear to a lot of fans during this period that we needed to get away from the 3 / 5 at the back. There were some odd things happening during that period, ranging from Klose’s form, King at centre back, Scott not being played in his best role, Weimann at wing back and numerous others. 
Once we switched to 4 at the back and played our best player in his best role, we improved. 
I just look back and wonder, had we changed it up earlier, that poor run of 1 win in 10 and 3 wins in 18 might be the difference between us making a playoff challenge. 
It’s a very very poor standard this season and I actually think that the way we’ve been playing this last couple of months would’ve had us up there had we played this way all season. 

Agree with all that, with WBA the first time I really thought we could be in a relegation scrap here. Oddly, the last two of those, away at Millwall and Coventry I was very reassured by in terms of showing some grit.

Edited April 29, 2023 by cityexile

[Davefevs]

3 hours ago, spudski said:

I agree with that Harry. It's been very average across the whole league. 

A friend of mine who's been a lifetime season ticket holder at Sheff Utd can't believe they are going up. 

He said they've been really lucky all season. Haven't played particularly good football or controlled games. He said when playing us, we were the team that looked more like the promotion hopeful. 

With their now financial cash flow problems and questionable ownership, I can see them coming straight back down with a very low points return. 

Sadly a season opportunity missed for us. 

This bugs me….sorry….and not having a go at you either, just a general point.  But where does it say you have to play “good” football or “control games”.  The emphasis of fans that if you don’t play pretty passing “stuff”, that it’s poor quality winds me up. There is more than one way to play this game.  I’d rather us play like Millwall and be 5th, than Swansea and be 12th for example. I’d rather us defend excellently like Luton do as another example and maximise that by playing fast and direct with little need for control.

I think it’s as equally a good league as any other year….I just think it has a bigger chunk of teams that are very equal.

Was last season’s championship better with Barnsley getting 30 points, Peterborough 37???

Rant over.

[W-S-M Seagull]

4 hours ago, Harry said:

This run of fixtures below was the problem. 
At the start of the season I’d have settled for lower-mid table. But on reflection I think this year has been the poorest championship season we’ve seen in many years. Every team we’ve faced at the Gate I’ve gone home thinking “well they weren’t anything special”. 
There are a number of very poor teams, a big number of very average teams, and really only 1 good team. 
In hindsight I think this season, despite all of our financial problems, has been a missed opportunity. 
 

I look back to that run of fixtures between October and the new year and think what might have been. 
It was clear to a lot of fans during this period that we needed to get away from the 3 / 5 at the back. There were some odd things happening during that period, ranging from Klose’s form, King at centre back, Scott not being played in his best role, Weimann at wing back and numerous others. 
Once we switched to 4 at the back and played our best player in his best role, we improved. 
I just look back and wonder, had we changed it up earlier, that poor run of 1 win in 10 and 3 wins in 18 might be the difference between us making a playoff challenge. 
It’s a very very poor standard this season and I actually think that the way we’ve been playing this last couple of months would’ve had us up there had we played this way all season. 

But within that we put in some very good performances. 

Swansea at home was decent, Sheffield United we were really impressive, Watford at home we were really good and the draws away to Millwall and Coventry were well earned draws.

Those 3 defeats were avoidable but by and large in that run of games we were decent.

[spudski]

15 minutes ago, Davefevs said:

This bugs me….sorry….and not having a go at you either, just a general point.  But where does it say you have to play “good” football or “control games”.  The emphasis of fans that if you don’t play pretty passing “stuff”, that it’s poor quality winds me up. There is more than one way to play this game.  I’d rather us play like Millwall and be 5th, than Swansea and be 12th for example. I’d rather us defend excellently like Luton do as another example and maximise that by playing fast and direct with little need for control.

I think it’s as equally a good league as any other year….I just think it has a bigger chunk of teams that are very equal.

Was last season’s championship better with Barnsley getting 30 points, Peterborough 37???

Rant over.

The words I used on my part were poorly phrased. This was taken from an email from him after when we played them up there. All conversations have been along the same theme all season. 

I agree a big chunk of the league are equal...equally average. 

Very similar to so many games we have played this year. We are bang average for 80 minutes, but have two or three special players who have the quality to produce a moment (Ndiaye / Berge / McAtee) AND then the defence to see out a game. This sounds ridiculous but I can honestly say we have only played well on occasions this season and most of the time do not look like a top two side. After last night it will take a cock-up of immense proportions to not get there. Would not want to be in the play-offs with Luton / Middlesborough (and my guess West Brom and Preston) as we would not get through, they all “want it” more than us.

[Davefevs]

27 minutes ago, spudski said:

The words I used on my part were poorly phrased. This was taken from an email from him after when we played them up there. All conversations have been along the same theme all season. 

I agree a big chunk of the league are equal...equally average. 

Very similar to so many games we have played this year. We are bang average for 80 minutes, but have two or three special players who have the quality to produce a moment (Ndiaye / Berge / McAtee) AND then the defence to see out a game. This sounds ridiculous but I can honestly say we have only played well on occasions this season and most of the time do not look like a top two side. After last night it will take a cock-up of immense proportions to not get there. Would not want to be in the play-offs with Luton / Middlesborough (and my guess West Brom and Preston) as we would not get through, they all “want it” more than us.

As I said, want having a pop at you Spud, just my general view.

Interesting email - those 3 players are “difference makers”.  PPs allows them to keep hold of players like that (or sign McAtee on loan), whereas we have to sell Semenyo.  I think they will have higher expectations too, so a bit down on their club that they haven’t “walked it”.

I love the variety of the Champ though.

[Midred]

On 28/04/2023 at 12:22, TonyTonyTony said:

To be fair they are more of a PL side than a team like Bournemouth

Shouldn't they be in the PL on merit rather than history. Otherwise there would be about 40 to 50 teams in the "promised land".