Pre-Match View From Colchester

[Kenilworth]

Both teams that go up automatically this season will lose 6 or more games.

How many then?
What's the max number one can afford to lose?

You are implying that the quality of this division is more evenly spread and you don't see a stand out leader like Brizzle last season (5 defeats) or Wolves the season before (5 defeats) - more so with Donny (12) and Bournemouth (11) the year before - but don't forget the phenomenal runs both went on towards the end of the season - especially Bournemouth - that doesn't happen that regularly.

 

[PeterNdlovu081]

I'd say you can afford to lose about 9 or 10 on average. 6 is way too low.

4 of the current top six have already lost 2 this season.

 

[William Henry Foulkes]

WHF - the clear fact is that if you want out of this league by automatic promotion then you cannot afford to lose more than 6 games in a season.

Games lost in red

1 Bristol City 46 16 5 2 48 17 13 7 3 48 21 58 99 5
2 Milton Keynes Dons 46 16 3 4 60 19 11 7 5 41 25 57 91 9

1 Wolverhampton Wanderers 46 17 4 2 48 15 14 6 3 41 16 58 103 5
2 Brentford 46 19 1 3 44 17 9 9 5 28 26 29 94 8

1 Doncaster Rovers 46 10 5 8 26 23 15 4 4 36 21 18 84 12(!)
2 Bournemouth 46 13 6 4 43 21 11 5 7 33 32 23 83 11

1 Charlton Athletic 46 15 6 2 46 20 15 5 3 36 16 46 101 5
2 Sheffield ********** 46 17 4 2 48 19 11 5 7 33 29 33 93 9

1 Brighton & Hove Albion (C) 46 17 4 2 54 22 11 7 5 31 18 45 95 7
2 Southampton (P) 46 16 4 3 44 13 12 4 7 42 25 48 92 10

1 Norwich City (C) 46 17 3 3 48 22 12 5 6 41 25 42 95 9
2 Leeds United (P) 46 14 6 3 41 19 11 5 7 36 25 33 86 10

1 Leicester City 46 13 9 1 41 16 14 6 3 43 23 45 96 4
2 Peterborough United 46 14 6 3 41 22 12 5 6 37 32 24 89 9

I've done this quickly, and it's very fiddley, but I think those numbers are right.

We can afford to chuck games away willy-nilly for a few weeks yet

 

[PeterNdlovu081]

In my opinion tomorrow is an absolut must win.

Failing to beat a team in 22nd seven games from the end of the season would be a disaster so same rules should apply seven games into the season.

 

[Kenilworth]

Games lost in red

1 Bristol City 46 16 5 2 48 17 13 7 3 48 21 58 99 5
2 Milton Keynes Dons 46 16 3 4 60 19 11 7 5 41 25 57 91 9

1 Wolverhampton Wanderers 46 17 4 2 48 15 14 6 3 41 16 58 103 5
2 Brentford 46 19 1 3 44 17 9 9 5 28 26 29 94 8

1 Doncaster Rovers 46 10 5 8 26 23 15 4 4 36 21 18 84 12(!)
2 Bournemouth 46 13 6 4 43 21 11 5 7 33 32 23 83 11

1 Charlton Athletic 46 15 6 2 46 20 15 5 3 36 16 46 101 5
2 Sheffield ********** 46 17 4 2 48 19 11 5 7 33 29 33 93 9

1 Brighton & Hove Albion (C) 46 17 4 2 54 22 11 7 5 31 18 45 95 7
2 Southampton (P) 46 16 4 3 44 13 12 4 7 42 25 48 92 10

1 Norwich City (C) 46 17 3 3 48 22 12 5 6 41 25 42 95 9
2 Leeds United (P) 46 14 6 3 41 19 11 5 7 36 25 33 86 10

1 Leicester City 46 13 9 1 41 16 14 6 3 43 23 45 96 4
2 Peterborough United 46 14 6 3 41 22 12 5 6 37 32 24 89 9

I've done this quickly, and it's very fiddley, but I think those numbers are right.

We can afford to chuck games away willy-nilly for a few weeks yet

Close to 6 then - within a couple or so games - logic still stands - cannot afford to lose too many early doors or it puts severe pressure on for the rest of the season

 

[metalblade]

A must win game in my eyes too we have already lost 33% of the games we have played, carry on like that for the rest of the season and we will be nowhere near the top two. Like others have said promoted teams only lose about six all season so we are already playing catch up. I think those saying we can afford to drop more points as it is early in the season are the same Clough apologist's who were last season saying judge after 10 games, judge after half the season, we will be better after the JTW, we are still in a play off spot blah blah blah excuse after excuse after excuse. It really should be clear to anyone if we don't bring in some better players and fast then we will be facing another season in league one, I'm sure Adkins knows this but I'm not so sure the board room do, that some fans are still trotting out the same old lame excuses is just unbelievable.

 

[ghandi]

Close to 6 then - within a couple or so games - logic still stands - cannot afford to lose too many early doors or it puts severe pressure on for the rest of the season

Not necessarily, it all depends how many matches the 3rd placed team lost as the team in 2nd may have had the "headroom" to lose more games.

 

[TJB.]

Again, why is this 3 points less important than 3 points later in the season?

All points are precious ones. At no point have I said that some 3 points are more or less valuable than other 3 points.

All I'm saying is my personal definition of a 'must-win' game is one that will have significant consequence if it isn't won. Losing to Colchester at home would be unnacceptable and frustrating, but at this stage of the season it's not something we couldn't easily recover from, especially with decent players to return from injury and (allegedly) loanees joining on the horizon.

 

[Slim Man]

We should be able to beat Colchester at home blindfolded. It's a free pass. Especially considering the last result it's vital we get back to winning ways, if not a rot could set in.
Getting less than 3 points from Bury and Colchester at home would not just be 'unacceptable' it'd be disgraceful and it'd show us just how far away we are from being a promotion winning outfit.

I'm certainly hoping that we're as good as I think we are, not that we showed any of that on saturday.

 

[TJB.]

It's a free pass.

Oh come on. Even with a lack of quality in a squad like Colchester's, all it takes is 90 mins of bus-parking, good organisation and dodgy refereeing to turn that 'free pass' into a no-score draw.

There's absolutely no such thing as a free pass. Colchester want 3 points just as much as we do. They're not going to turn up and roll over. We have to work hard to beat any side in this division, especially while there are still question marks over some of our starting XI.

 

[Smirth]

Teams will come and sit behind the ball at home and make it hard for us to break down, most visiting teams have done for the 5 years we've been down here and teams seem to be getting better at it, or we seem to find it harder to break through.

Bury were no different on Saturday, they came for a point and were happy to surrender possession and soak up pressure and look to hit us on the odd counter attack which they did. It was a very fortuitous 3 points and on another day we'd have won the game comfortably had Sammon and Sharp taken their guilt-edged chances at 0-0.

Bury was just a blip as far as I'm concerned, nothing more or less, and the players will already have put it out of their minds and moved on to Colchester tonight. If we play like we did against Bury and take our chances we will win tonight by 2 or 3 goals. Once we get a goal up on teams at home it will make our lives easier and we will go on to score more, but until then it will be a struggle which Adkins keeps highlighting in his pre match interviews.

I'm fully prepared for home games to be less entertaining than away ones this season, last season was a precursor to it with most teams just coming and sitting in their own half and looking to take a point. What is different to last season, and more promising, is we are making more chances at home which we often struggled to do last season and were left relying on an individual to work some magic.

 

[super_pig]

it doesn't matter so much about how many games that you lose.. it means you have less headroom to draw games

 

[grafikhaus]

Let's not panic. I reckon we'll win tonight and be back on track...















...then we'll lose at Bradford.

 

[MobileBlade]

A must win game in my eyes too we have already lost 33% of the games we have played, carry on like that for the rest of the season and we will be nowhere near the top two. Like others have said promoted teams only lose about six all season so we are already playing catch up. I think those saying we can afford to drop more points as it is early in the season are the same Clough apologist's who were last season saying judge after 10 games, judge after half the season, we will be better after the JTW, we are still in a play off spot blah blah blah excuse after excuse after excuse. It really should be clear to anyone if we don't bring in some better players and fast then we will be facing another season in league one, I'm sure Adkins knows this but I'm not so sure the board room do, that some fans are still trotting out the same old lame excuses is just unbelievable.

And there in post lies the difference between positive and negative Blade. Positive Blade says we have 66% of our matches meaning we are on target for 92 points, comfortable for automatic promotion. Negative Blade says we have lost 33% of our matches which is not promotion material.

 

[1danewhitehouse]

I think this thread has become too bogged down with semantics. I think we can all agree that this is very much a “should win” game even if not a “must win”. On paper, it’s one of the most winnable games and we don’t want to be throwing such opportunities to pick up maximum points away.

I suppose the consequence of failing to win such a game is that we would probably have to go and win a game that we would be less expecting of a win. If we win today, a point on Sunday at Bradford’s not a bad result but if we don’t win tonight, we will be more anxious for a win Sunday as a point would still leave us some way off the pace.

I think we can probably afford to lose about 8 or 9 over the season and still reasonably expect to get top 2. If we want the title, then we probably need to be keeping it down to about 6 or 7 defeats. If we lose 10 or 11, we will need some luck regarding the balance of the table to get 2nd place.

The good news is though, despite losing 2 games already, we’ve still averaged 2 points per game so far which is healthy. This is because we seem to be in the good habit of not drawing games (win 1 one lose 1 is better than drawing 2). Some saying if we lose a third of our games we have no chance. The counter argument is if we keep winning 2 thirds of our games we will go up. The draws will come at some stage though and it’s important that we start turning those odd defeats into draws rather than the wins.

Whichever way you look at it, anything but a win tonight would be extremely disappointing and demoralising. But I’m confident we’ll see them off. Seems they’re a nice footballing side but have a soft underbelly. I can see us winning 3-1.

 

[Geordie Blade]

Again, why is this 3 points less important than 3 points later in the season?

Devil's advocate here, but "must win" doesn't mean that it is worth more or less. Leicester away in 1990 was 'must win'* because it was the last day of the season and we needed 3 points to be sure of promotion. For games earlier in the season, there is plenty of time to come back or fall away, so the importance of the game isn't yet known. There's (say) a 10% chance that the 3 points will be vital, and a 90% chance that they'll be irrelevant. As such, it's difficult to describe it as a 'must win' game. I hope that we do win, though.

*I know that Newcastle actually lost to Middlesbrough, so we would have gone up anyway even if we'd lost, but we didn't know that.

 

[Trigger Blade]

Bury were no different on Saturday, they came for a point and were happy to surrender possession and soak up pressure and look to hit us on the odd counter attack which they did. It was a very fortuitous 3 points and on another day we'd have won the game comfortably had Sammon and Sharp taken their guilt-edged chances at 0-0.

They may have come for a point, but at 0-0, they brought on a second striker which showed some ambition and within a few minutes, Pope had scored. I didn't see it as a park the bus performance. As you say, if Sammon had aimed his header for either side of the keeper and Billy hadn't skied his shot, it may have ended quite differently

 

[grafikhaus]

I suppose the consequence of failing to win such a game is that we would probably have to go and win a game that we would be less expecting of a win. If we win today, a point on Sunday at Bradford’s not a bad result but if we don’t win tonight, we will be more anxious for a win Sunday as a point would still leave us some way off the pace.

Or, conversely, there's little point winning away at Swindon to chuck three points away at home to Bury.

 

[William Henry Foulkes]

Oh come on. Even with a lack of quality in a squad like Colchester's, all it takes is 90 mins of bus-parking, good organisation and dodgy refereeing to turn that 'free pass' into a no-score draw.

There's absolutely no such thing as a free pass. Colchester want 3 points just as much as we do. They're not going to turn up and roll over. We have to work hard to beat any side in this division, especially while there are still question marks over some of our starting XI.

Exactly. Some posts.are clearly automatically generated.by AI researchers working on a Turing test for a cliche-bot.

 

[metalblade]

A must win game in my eyes too we have already lost 33% of the games we have played, carry on like that for the rest of the season and we will be nowhere near the top two. Like others have said promoted teams only lose about six all season so we are already playing catch up. I think those saying we can afford to drop more points as it is early in the season are the same Clough apologist's who were last season saying judge after 10 games, judge after half the season, we will be better after the JTW, we are still in a play off spot blah blah blah excuse after excuse after excuse. It really should be clear to anyone if we don't bring in some better players and fast then we will be facing another season in league one, I'm sure Adkins knows this but I'm not so sure the board room do, that some fans are still trotting out the same old lame excuses is just unbelievable.

And there in post lies the difference between positive and negative Blade. Positive Blade says we have 66% of our matches meaning we are on target for 92 points, comfortable for automatic promotion. Negative Blade says we have lost 33% of our matches which is not promotion material.

2-3 ....................... I look forward to hearing your lame excuses lost 42.8% now.

 

[Caveblade]

Sorry but you cannot have a mentality of losing games is less important early season, it just breeds complacency. We are now playing catch up. All the apologists who complacently suggest Gillingham can't keep winning, yet there is no reason they can't and yet again we face the play offs.

The six points we have just squandered could well be the difference between The Championship and year 6.

 

[Kenilworth]

So, even by these standards - which I could take issue with (work in progress and all that) - it's a probably must-not-lose game, rather than a definitely must-win game .

Wild Geese
Honk Honk Honk

3 defeats from 7
Shall we judge after 10?

 

[Kenilworth]

Games lost in red

1 Bristol City 46 16 5 2 48 17 13 7 3 48 21 58 99 5
2 Milton Keynes Dons 46 16 3 4 60 19 11 7 5 41 25 57 91 9

1 Wolverhampton Wanderers 46 17 4 2 48 15 14 6 3 41 16 58 103 5
2 Brentford 46 19 1 3 44 17 9 9 5 28 26 29 94 8

1 Doncaster Rovers 46 10 5 8 26 23 15 4 4 36 21 18 84 12(!)
2 Bournemouth 46 13 6 4 43 21 11 5 7 33 32 23 83 11

1 Charlton Athletic 46 15 6 2 46 20 15 5 3 36 16 46 101 5
2 Sheffield ********** 46 17 4 2 48 19 11 5 7 33 29 33 93 9

1 Brighton & Hove Albion (C) 46 17 4 2 54 22 11 7 5 31 18 45 95 7
2 Southampton (P) 46 16 4 3 44 13 12 4 7 42 25 48 92 10

1 Norwich City (C) 46 17 3 3 48 22 12 5 6 41 25 42 95 9
2 Leeds United (P) 46 14 6 3 41 19 11 5 7 36 25 33 86 10

1 Leicester City 46 13 9 1 41 16 14 6 3 43 23 45 96 4
2 Peterborough United 46 14 6 3 41 22 12 5 6 37 32 24 89 9

I've done this quickly, and it's very fiddley, but I think those numbers are right.

We can afford to chuck games away willy-nilly for a few weeks yet

Well they are certainly trying

 

[MobileBlade]

2-3 ....................... I look forward to hearing your lame excuses lost 42.8% now.

1 point behind the average and median points total of the champions for the last 10 years after 7 games - see compared with last season thread.

 

[metalblade]

1 point behind the average and median points total of the champions for the last 10 years after 7 games - see compared with last season thread.

Maybe so but there are four teams doing better than we are so if the trend continues over the whole season we will be nowhere near the top two no matter how you dress it up. Can you honestly see a huge improvement happening with the present squad ? My original point still holds good we need better players in key areas and we need them fast. BTW still waiting to hear why or how a team of perennial struggler's in the bottom four managed to trounce us last night only one poster on this forum (BTL) seems to think it was down to bad luck.

 

[MobileBlade]

Maybe so but there are four teams doing better than we are so if the trend continues over the whole season we will be nowhere near the top two no matter how you dress it up. Can you honestly see a huge improvement happening with the present squad ? My original point still holds good we need better players in key areas and we need them fast. BTW still waiting to hear why or how a team of perennial struggler's in the bottom four managed to trounce us last night only one poster on this forum (BTL) seems to think it was down to bad luck.

As I said in another thread, the issue is the middle of midfield. Last night they were permanently square to each other and as a result they were never far enough forward in support when we had the ball, and were not deep enough when out of possession. The gaps between the two lines was huge. That is four times I have seen it this season and said it after every game, won or lost. I think that is the area that will be addressed by the weekend.

 

[MobileBlade]

Maybe so but there are four teams doing better than we are so if the trend continues over the whole season we will be nowhere near the top two no matter how you dress it up. Can you honestly see a huge improvement happening with the present squad ? My original point still holds good we need better players in key areas and we need them fast. BTW still waiting to hear why or how a team of perennial struggler's in the bottom four managed to trounce us last night only one poster on this forum (BTL) seems to think it was down to bad luck.

And just as a sub-note, when we talk about the average and median points totals after 7 games, how many of those in the last 10 seasons were actually in the same position as us after 7 games - that is in 5th position or lower? I'll give you a clue. It is more than 4.

 

[RMBlade]

I think we need to change up to a 4-1-2-1-2 (wide)

Howard
Freeman Edgar Collins (burn) McEverley (harris)
Basham
JCR/Flynn Woolford\Adams
Baxter
Sharp Sammon

I dont think you can play adams and JCR together due to at least one of them to be tracking back, but seen as though it looks like adams and JCR cannot play 60+ minutes, there is no reason why we cant mix that up.

I think Baxter is more suited to a CAM role rather than CM and will provide more support for the front two (closing the gaps between the current 4-4-2 lines.

Leaving Basham to play a "Matic" role. He could also fall back to make a back 5 when under the cosh, but I would like him to sit back and sit in front of the back 4, there isnt much point in him pushing forward because realistically he doesn't bring much to the team in an attacking sense.