7 games in March | Vital Football

7 games in March

G

gills69

Vital Squad Member
Salford (A)
Barrow (A)
Tranmere (H)
Wimbledon (A)
Grimsby (H)
Morecambe (A)
Crewe (H)

To maintain our play off position I reckon 14 points out of 21 will be needed.

Taking points off Barrow, Wimbledon, Morecambe and Crewe would be particularly handy but any good results against those teams will be undone if we don't beat Tranmere and Grimsby at Priestfield.

How many do you think we'll get?

NB: Any nibblesesque response such as 'somewhere between 0 and 21' will be ignored. :-)
 
11pts or more will hopefully keep us in the mix for the final run home.

Think 14 might be a stretch. That would be 4-2-1 minimum. And a fair few of those 7 clubs are in the top reaches, or fighting for the 7th spot. If we do get 14 or more, I reckon we’d be nicely entrenched in the 7, and secretly dreaming of gatecrashing top 3.

I originally thought the Salford game would be easier. But notice they were unbeaten in 8, inc wins v Barrow, Crewe, Wrexham and Crawley, until they got thumped by Mansfield. So not a bad team and they will want to bounce back.
 
I'm happier playing better sides who will come out a little bit more, so it's the Tranmere and Grimsby matches that concern me. We really need to win our home games and those two should be the most comfortable on paper, but we've given up so many points against lower half sides this season, and our record against teams directly in the relegation battle is atrocious - I think we've lost to 4 sides who were either bottom or 2nd bottom at the time of the game, which really is dire.

Of the March fixtures I think the first and last are the trickiest in theory, Salford have been good lately up until yesterday, and Crewe are on a great run of form. Barrow, Morecambe and AFC aren't pulling up any trees form-wise so we should fancy picking up points against all three, but is 9 points from those 3 away games too much to ask? Possibly. I think we need to be going along at a rate of around 1.5 points per game to keep in play-off contention - anything more than that and we should be in them comfortably, any less and there's enough teams just behind us to make the most of a slip. So 1.5 PPG for the month of March is around 11 points which should be totally doable and set us up for the final 5 nicely. Personally I can see us picking up 13 from this set.
 
JoeScout said:
100%, I'm absolutely expecting this place to be a pit of doom and despair come 5pm next Saturday.
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Exactly that. Our forums are full of “we have to back up the Wrexham result by beating Salford. Wrexham means nothing if we don’t” as if a win should be a given.

I could imagine that being true if Salford were bottom and adrift. But as said earlier, they are one of the form teams and have beaten 3 main contenders in the last month. It will be a very difficult match.

I’m with you regarding playing better teams or lower teams. Our recent form has 3 good results v 1st, 3rd and Notts C who were 7th at the time. But loss and home draw v lower-mid table Newport and Swindon.
 
Looking at past seasons, and the average points for 7th, I estimated before the Wrexham game, we’d need around 24 points from 13 games to be in the play offs. So I now make that 21 from 12. Promotion form and better than we’ve achieved this season. Can be done though and we seem to be improving. Plus the tight nature of league 2 this year could well mean fewer than 70 points are needed to sneak into seventh place.
 
Salford have only lost once since that nice Mr Robinson took over and that was to Mansfield on Saturday.
 
Don`t see why we can`t beat Salford. We`re probably a bigger threat on the counter and set pieces than most and Salford will come at us. Our success or otherwise over the next two months might well be influenced by the presence of an additional big and mobile forward on our front line - someone like a fit Josh Andrews, perhaps. UTG
 
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