End of Sept

[SwissBlade]

For many years when this forum has gone into its August meltdown I've always said let's see after 10 games. No real reason for 10 other than I think by the end of September we can see where we're at and how we're settling into the season. It's also a chance to see where the opposition are that we've already played.

Currently we're 4 games in and we've lost to the top of the league and beaten the bottom of the league. It means nothing.

I think even after 2 home games were starting to see how Wilder likes to approach the home games. But we need to see more as Brentford we're toothless up front and Barnsley were poor all over the pitch and yet we only managed 1 goal in each.

Once we get to the Forest game at the end of Sept we'll have played some really tough games:
Big spenders and Prem relegated - Boro, S'land and Wolves
Local derbies - pigs and dingles
Local rivals - Forest and Derby
Last seasons league one rivals - Bolton

Add to that Norwich and Cardiff being tough opponents, Brentford as a tough opener and as well and this should give a good enough idea of where we're going to be.

Pigs reckon we've only beaten the easiest teams, which maybe the case but then again I think that Boro and Cardiff will be as tough as it gets.

 

[grafikhaus]

For many years when this forum has gone into its August meltdown I've always said let's see after 10 games. No real reason for 10 other than I think by the end of September we can see where we're at and how we're settling into the season. It's also a chance to see where the opposition are that we've already played.

Currently we're 4 games in and we've lost to the top of the league and beaten the bottom of the league. It means nothing.

I think even after 2 home games were starting to see how Wilder likes to approach the home games. But we need to see more as Brentford we're toothless up front and Barnsley were poor all over the pitch and yet we only managed 1 goal in each.

Once we get to the Forest game at the end of Sept we'll have played some really tough games:
Big spenders and Prem relegated - Boro, S'land and Wolves
Local derbies - pigs and dingles
Local rivals - Forest and Derby
Last seasons league one rivals - Bolton

Add to that Norwich and Cardiff being tough opponents, Brentford as a tough opener and as well and this should give a good enough idea of where we're going to be.

Pigs reckon we've only beaten the easiest teams, which maybe the case but then again I think that Boro and Cardiff will be as tough as it gets.

Agree, Swiss. By the end of September, we'll have played 11 games and will have a better idea of how the season is shaping up. This is my latest incarnation of 'Compared to last season':



Last season by Game 11 Leeds' (who just missed out on the play-offs) and Forest's (who narrowly avoided relegation) records began to diverge. Leeds, after a poor start, began to show consistency and rarely lost more than one game 'on the trot' before their season began to unravel at the 'business end'. Forest regularly went on losing runs punctuated by increasingly-rare wins. The secret is to expect the occasional 'blips' and make sure we bounce back before the situation gets too serious.

 

[Pinchy]

We will be absolutely fine. I've said so from the start. By the end of September (in fact by the end of August) we'll have added significant additional quality.

 

[SwissBlade]

Agree, Swiss. By the end of September, we'll have played 11 games and will have a better idea of how the season is shaping up. This is my latest incarnation of 'Compared to last season':

View attachment 29740

Last season by Game 11 Leeds' (who just missed out on the play-offs) and Forest's (who narrowly avoided relegation) records began to diverge. Leeds, after a poor start, began to show consistency and rarely lost more than one game 'on the trot' before their season began to unravel at the 'business end'. Forest regularly went on losing runs punctuated by increasingly-rare wins. The secret is to expect the occasional 'blips' and make sure we bounce back before the situation gets too serious.

Thats interesting to see actually as you'd probably expect us to be somewhere in between the two.

 

[Blade56]

Agree, Swiss. By the end of September, we'll have played 11 games and will have a better idea of how the season is shaping up. This is my latest incarnation of 'Compared to last season':

View attachment 29740

Last season by Game 11 Leeds' (who just missed out on the play-offs) and Forest's (who narrowly avoided relegation) records began to diverge. Leeds, after a poor start, began to show consistency and rarely lost more than one game 'on the trot' before their season began to unravel at the 'business end'. Forest regularly went on losing runs punctuated by increasingly-rare wins. The secret is to expect the occasional 'blips' and make sure we bounce back before the situation gets too serious.

I love a feckin giraffe

 

[grafikhaus]

I love a feckin giraffe

Have another, then.

 

[Blade56]

Have another, then.

View attachment 29742

Sooty, had to unlike it, no legend, wtf am l looking at? Feckin Like fishin

 

[SteveBlade]

Agree, as of now we've played two teams at home who we should expect to beat, and two teams away who you'd struggle to see us getting anything from.

Apparently the worst team in the league in Barnsley have beat Forest already, and I don't think Brentford will go down, despite their poor start.

I reckon we'll be very good at home. If we can find some sort of form away then it could be a very solid season.

Excited to see where we are at the end of next month.

 

[west_yorks_blade]

Sooty, had to unlike it, no legend, wtf am l looking at? Feckin Like fishin

i think its my wife left tit

 

[SwissBlade]

Agree, as of now we've played two teams at home who we should expect to beat, and two teams away who you'd struggle to see us getting anything from.

Apparently the worst team in the league in Barnsley have beat Forest already, and I don't think Brentford will go down, despite their poor start.

I reckon we'll be very good at home. If we can find some sort of form away then it could be a very solid season.

Excited to see where we are at the end of next month.

I think you're right, of we build our season on our home form and then pick up a few results away, with a bit of luck

 

[Norderner]

Agree, as of now we've played two teams at home who we should expect to beat, and two teams away who you'd struggle to see us getting anything from.

Apparently the worst team in the league in Barnsley have beat Forest already, and I don't think Brentford will go down, despite their poor start.

I reckon we'll be very good at home. If we can find some sort of form away then it could be a very solid season.

Excited to see where we are at the end of next month.

Expected to beat Brentcelona and the Barnsley Chops at home? Really? By whom? This ain't no computer game, it's the real world! Brentcelona finished just outside the play offs last season and added yet more quality skilful and pacey players to their squad pre season, hence the fact that they're minuscule band of fans were lairy. Yesterday was a so called derby game. When was the last time we'd beaten them at home before yesterday? I predicted a draw before hand, what with them beating Florist. Nobody expected us to get a point at Boro, but we should have, and the whole world now knows we should have (bar the thick, blinkered Pigs and ne eyed Boro fans)? And had we got the penalty when 0-0 at Cardiff, we may have had another point or three from there? In conclusion, contrary to what the Pigs at Murder Inc say, we ain't in La Liga, and they're definitely not the Barcelona/Real Madrid of it either, but it is a tough, unpredictable grind.

 

[SB_90]

this is going to be tough & we have to be enjoy the wins, also stay realistic when we lose just remember as long as we are above 16th we should be fine. because without comparing us to Barnsley they came 14th last yr & only won 15 games which means over 2/3rds of the season they drew or lose & there will be games like next Saturday, where we have to go a draw would be fantastic result

 

[Maidenhead]

Agree, Swiss. By the end of September, we'll have played 11 games and will have a better idea of how the season is shaping up. This is my latest incarnation of 'Compared to last season':

View attachment 29740

Last season by Game 11 Leeds' (who just missed out on the play-offs) and Forest's (who narrowly avoided relegation) records began to diverge. Leeds, after a poor start, began to show consistency and rarely lost more than one game 'on the trot' before their season began to unravel at the 'business end'. Forest regularly went on losing runs punctuated by increasingly-rare wins. The secret is to expect the occasional 'blips' and make sure we bounce back before the situation gets too serious.

I'm liking it.

Great work grafikhaus

 

[SwissBlade]

11 games played, 21 points (average of 1.91 Points per game) and sitting 3rd (although that could change if Leeds draw or win at the pigs today).

Not a bad couple of months then. I think its fair to say that we have been unlucky in games against Boro, Norwich and Forest not to come away with a draw, but perhaps on the balance of chances we could also say that Brentford could've easily had a point as well, so we're about where we deserve to be.

Home
P5 W4 D0 L1 F7 A2 GD+5 Pts12
(2.4 points per game)
Home form has been strong, something we probably expect, but we've played Brentford who were expected to be a difficult side and Wolves, one of the big spending, form sides. Unexpected defeat to Norwich after a really good performance, probably the only low point so far.

Really happy with home form and this will be the key over the season, still some big teams to come to the lane. We've only played one of the current top 10 - Villa, Cardiff, Leeds will all be around the top 6 and probably automatics when they visit.

Away
P6 W3 D0 L3 F8 A8 GD0 Pts 9
(1.5 Points per game)
We've played more games away and after a shakey start away at Boro and Cardiff where i think its fair to say that they were both the better teams, we've picked it up. I was not expecting us to have won so many away, but at the same time unlucky to have lost against Forest yesterday. We're certainly managing to score away too who would have expected 4 (four) goals away at the pigs.

Progress Summary
Of the top 10, only Ipswich (8th) have lost as many as us. Something Wilder said at the start of last season was that we needed to turn the defeats into draws and perhaps, this is where we sometimes need to be smarter. Norwich and Forest were both winnable games, but we came away with nothing. Yesterday was down to being sloppy in and around the area and that needs to improve. In some games, despite scoring plenty on our day (Pigs, Derby, Sunderland, Wolves) we do need to be closing games out. At 0-1 up away to Forest should we have stuck 11 men behind the ball? No, but we do need to be more clinical.

The Division
I've been a little surprised. Its clearly been tougher than League one, however i was expecting sides to be much more of an attacking threat than they have been. We've had battles and tough games - Boro, Cardiff, Forest and ironically Bolton, have really been tough games in patches, but as Wilder said yesterday nobody has dominated us like we have dominated such large periods of the games against the likes of the Pigs, Wolves and Forest yesterday.

Are we Contenders?
Top 6 is very much attainable, somebody wrote yesterday that under Wilder we don't have a big issue with losing as we know that next game we will start again and give everything. Its not to say we weren't disappointed to lose yesterday and against Norwich, but we know that next game we will put it right.

Can we push into the automatic slots? Again, we've shown that we can. Its nearly a quarter of the way into the season and we're sat in 3rd. We've picked up quite a few injuries, but the squad has been coping, the international break is probably well timed to get Freeman, Sharp, Clayton, Baldock, Hanson, Ched and Lavs all back to 100% again.

We have 14 games from October to the end of the year, playing 6 of the current top 10. We need everyone fit, we need to use the squad and we need to maintain our decent start. If we kick on from the start we've made and take the average points per game above 2 by the end of the year, looking at how close it is at the top now, we'll be right up there.

 

[coaxingstar71]

In my mind, I'm still thinking we aim to get 50 points on the board and then go from there. Obviously if we keep going at the current points ratio, we should have that by the turn of the year.

 

[blade too long]

No we are better than that and yesterday had more possession and shots than forest at their place. Overall we will win more than we lose as we are creative and give ourselves more chances to win
We won't win them all but it won't be for the want of trying

 

[Ldn_Rd_Blades]

It would be brilliant if we could keep in the mix til January and hopefully strengthen and kick on.

 

[blade67]

There's a thread on here (that I cant find) with a link to pork talk where a guy has done some good analysis of what is needed to make the top 6.

The bottom line is that team who win less than 24 points in any 15/16 game run hardly every make the playoffs. I think only 2 or 3 teams in 20 years made the top 6 after having a poor first 15 games. He also points out that the top 6 nearly always comes from the top 10 after 15 games.

It makes sense so I'm changing my "let's see where we are after 10 games" to "lets see where we are after 15. So it's the end of October that I'm using as a benchmark.

 

[Cerberus Blade]

In my mind, I'm still thinking we aim to get 50 points on the board and then go from there. Obviously if we keep going at the current points ratio, we should have that by the turn of the year.

I hear this kind of thing a lot and I really don't understand it. It's never crossed my mind once that this team will have any problem "surviving" at this level, not once. So why would I be looking to identify a points target that may guarantee "survival", when survival has never crossed my mind? And what do folks mean when they say, like you've said, that we should "get 50 points then go from there?" Does this mean we start doing something different when we get 50 points on the board? What is it we do different at that point? Play different? Pick different formations or tactics? Think different? What's happening exactly at that 50 point achievement mark? I'd genuinely love to know. Oh yes, and how do we know 50 points will be enough, it could be 51, or 52, or then again, it could be 48, or 49, so I'm really struggling to understand this philosophy. I've never heard Wilder come out with this either and I'm pretty certain it's not the way he thinks about it.

I suspect he probably thinks about it the same way that I do. That you go out there, not with a points target in mind for survival, but with a points target in mind for every game - and that points target is 3 points per game. And if you keep focused on that then everything else is irrelevant.

I'm not having a pop at you coaxingstar71 because you're just repeating what hundreds or thousands of fans come out with. But I just think it's totally negative thinking, totally negative. And I really don't like that at all. An alternative would be to think how many points we'll need to win the Championship outright maybe? At least that would be positive thinking.

 

[SwissBlade]

No we are better than that and yesterday had more possession and shots than forest at their place. Overall we will win more than we lose as we are creative and give ourselves more chances to win
We won't win them all but it won't be for the want of trying

I think these are the small margins which make the difference between top 6 and top 2, turn those unlucky defeats into draws or wins and you end up in the positions of Cardiff or Wolves (yes i know we beat Wolves). They're losing fewer games against mid-table sides.

 

[HighfieldBlade]

I know it's a cliché, but If you'd said to me at the start of the season we'd be sitting 3rd in the table by the end of September, I'd've bitten your arm off.

We really have nothing to fear in this league!

 

[derfblade.3]

Villa starting to push along, with Norwich also moving up. Fulham are looking solid and Boro will no doubt be in the mix so it's looking like a real battle is emerging. The top 2 could be anybody's and the top 6 is any ones guess with Brizzle and Preston going well.
Take the defeats on the chin and look forward to the next game. It's going to be a roller coaster for every team in this barmy league but if i were to stick my neck out i'd go.......Wolves,Fulham top 2. Norwich, blades,Boro, Weeds Cardiff and Hull making a late push. That's going on what i've seen and recent results.

 

[coaxingstar71]

I hear this kind of thing a lot and I really don't understand it. It's never crossed my mind once that this team will have any problem "surviving" at this level, not once. So why would I be looking to identify a points target that may guarantee "survival", when survival has never crossed my mind? And what do folks mean when they say, like you've said, that we should "get 50 points then go from there?" Does this mean we start doing something different when we get 50 points on the board? What is it we do different at that point? Play different? Pick different formations or tactics? Think different? What's happening exactly at that 50 point achievement mark? I'd genuinely love to know. Oh yes, and how do we know 50 points will be enough, it could be 51, or 52, or then again, it could be 48, or 49, so I'm really struggling to understand this philosophy. I've never heard Wilder come out with this either and I'm pretty certain it's not the way he thinks about it.

I suspect he probably thinks about it the same way that I do. That you go out there, not with a points target in mind for survival, but with a points target in mind for every game - and that points target is 3 points per game. And if you keep focused on that then everything else is irrelevant.

I'm not having a pop at you coaxingstar71 because you're just repeating what hundreds or thousands of fans come out with. But I just think it's totally negative thinking, totally negative. And I really don't like that at all. An alternative would be to think how many points we'll need to win the Championship outright maybe? At least that would be positive thinking.

I wasn't suggesting we do anything different and perhaps it is a cliche, but at the start of this season I, perhaps negatively (from years of supporting the Blades), would have taken survival, and generally, although not always, 50 points is usually enough to ensure that. I did say that I expect us to get there on current form by the turn of the year so I'm not sure that's being negative. I'm sure Wilder, like most managers, is only thinking about the next 3 points, or that's what we are led to believe.

Think you're trying to be a bit clever in your post, "struggling to understand this philosophy" - really, is it that difficult to comprehend? Still, that's your prerogative.

 

[Esablade]

Top six into October and smashed the pigs...

 

[Isar]

It would be brilliant if we could keep in the mix til January and hopefully strengthen and kick on.

That is pretty much how I see it. I hope to see us in at least the top 8 in the new year, and hopefully in January CW will have some luck recruiting players to strengthen the squad and see us push on and secure a play-off place. It's been a great start to life in the Championship, a lot of positive vibes from BDTBL.

 

[Houston_Blade]

This season is the first time in my time supporting the Blades that I don't think "the bubble will burst soon". Even last season until we were home and hosed I was nervous. We can hopefully enjoy this season and try to take 4 or 5 points from every 9 but be entertained along the way. The key is that people keep a level head all season and don't react badly to a few losses here and there. I agree that if we could turn a loss into a draw now and again it would be nice, however I don't think anyone expected us to go unbeaten this season.

At the end of this calendar year I would love someone to find out Wilder's last 3 calendar year points totals and win %'s etc, it should be pretty good.

 

[blade too long]

I think these are the small margins which make the difference between top 6 and top 2, turn those unlucky defeats into draws or wins and you end up in the positions of Cardiff or Wolves (yes i know we beat Wolves). They're losing fewer games against mid-table sides.

its early days for them too , weve lost narrowly to boro , cardiff and forest and norwich none of those are driftwood, thing is we keep winning, had we won 1 and drawn 2 of last 3 wed have a point less despite not losing

 

[metalblade]

Well I don't know what to make of this league the pigs have just given Leeds a good tonking everybody can beat anybody it seems. It doesn't look like any team is consistent the teams that are will go up, if we can turn some of the defeats into draws who knows ?

 

[SwissBlade]

its early days for them too , weve lost narrowly to boro , cardiff and forest and norwich none of those are driftwood, thing is we keep winning, had we won 1 and drawn 2 of last 3 wed have a point less despite not losing

Yeah of course, but the point was not going undefeated, but turning the losses into draws or wins.

 

[BushBlade]

Yeah of course, but the point was not going undefeated, but turning the losses into draws or wins.

Although if we turned our losses into draws or wins, we'd be undefeated.