ucandomagic
Well-Known Member
6 points in 5 days, I’ll drink to that, and we are now solidifying our playoff credentials.
Very sound against Wrexham – I thought Ayew was outstanding – held the ball up well, pressed high and really hard, and his saved effort created BBD’s winner. Speaking of pressing high and hard – Rom has turned into Cal O’Hare off the ball, a Yorkshire Terrier snapping at your heels and never letting up.
Against Preston – it was a good game to have to miss Kitching – as our creaky, leaky central defence would have been easy meat to a decent side. Sydie stepped up in Kal’s absence – him and Kalvin are clearly our best midfield pair. Rom down the left is now his proven best position – and with his high pressing he is on another level. If we had a right-footed equivalent for the right wing we would stretch teams wide to breaking point – Chong is just physically too weak and has to cut inside to trouble all the time.
Remember, that based on the last decade, I am taking a 92 points target for Automatics, a 70 points target for 8th (playoffs) and an 81 points target for 4th (playoff semis). My pre-season Blades forecast was to get that 8th place with 70 points. I’m showing the first 15 fixtures on the graphs at the moment, so that the difference between the lines is visible. Graph 1 plots our progress against those promotion targets, with my forecast for each match that will deliver those targets. After Wrexham and Preston, on 22 points from 14 games, we are right on my benchmark for 4th place!! Even I don’t believe that we are a 4th placed team at the moment – our stats are bottom half – but good results breed better confidence which breeds better results. I still think we’ll finish 8th.
Graph 1:
Graph 2 is the comparison with our last 2 seasons – and with 22 points we are now a huge 13 points ahead of last season, and 8 points behind Wilder’s 92 point season in 24/25.
Graph 2:
The League Table shows us in 9th place, level on points with 8th. The table highlights the point that our current position is probably flattering our performances. If you look at the colours on the table we have taken 20 points from 8 games against teams in the bottom 11 – and 2 points from 6 games against teams in the top 12. So from that you’d expect us to be around 12th rather than 9th, but as John Harvey-Jones once said to me “always shoot for the stars, but with your feet on the ground”!
League Table:
Charlton away on Saturday. I don’t like Nathan Jones – a bit of a Parkinson type of character – jumping on the dugout roof away at Burnley was totally classless. They’ve had some surprising results, as well as bad ones though, and I’m very glad Kitching will be back.
UTB & Slava Ukraini!
Very sound against Wrexham – I thought Ayew was outstanding – held the ball up well, pressed high and really hard, and his saved effort created BBD’s winner. Speaking of pressing high and hard – Rom has turned into Cal O’Hare off the ball, a Yorkshire Terrier snapping at your heels and never letting up.
Against Preston – it was a good game to have to miss Kitching – as our creaky, leaky central defence would have been easy meat to a decent side. Sydie stepped up in Kal’s absence – him and Kalvin are clearly our best midfield pair. Rom down the left is now his proven best position – and with his high pressing he is on another level. If we had a right-footed equivalent for the right wing we would stretch teams wide to breaking point – Chong is just physically too weak and has to cut inside to trouble all the time.
Remember, that based on the last decade, I am taking a 92 points target for Automatics, a 70 points target for 8th (playoffs) and an 81 points target for 4th (playoff semis). My pre-season Blades forecast was to get that 8th place with 70 points. I’m showing the first 15 fixtures on the graphs at the moment, so that the difference between the lines is visible. Graph 1 plots our progress against those promotion targets, with my forecast for each match that will deliver those targets. After Wrexham and Preston, on 22 points from 14 games, we are right on my benchmark for 4th place!! Even I don’t believe that we are a 4th placed team at the moment – our stats are bottom half – but good results breed better confidence which breeds better results. I still think we’ll finish 8th.
Graph 1:
Graph 2 is the comparison with our last 2 seasons – and with 22 points we are now a huge 13 points ahead of last season, and 8 points behind Wilder’s 92 point season in 24/25.
Graph 2:
The League Table shows us in 9th place, level on points with 8th. The table highlights the point that our current position is probably flattering our performances. If you look at the colours on the table we have taken 20 points from 8 games against teams in the bottom 11 – and 2 points from 6 games against teams in the top 12. So from that you’d expect us to be around 12th rather than 9th, but as John Harvey-Jones once said to me “always shoot for the stars, but with your feet on the ground”!
League Table:
Charlton away on Saturday. I don’t like Nathan Jones – a bit of a Parkinson type of character – jumping on the dugout roof away at Burnley was totally classless. They’ve had some surprising results, as well as bad ones though, and I’m very glad Kitching will be back.
UTB & Slava Ukraini!
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