Mid-term table & results

[FGR Stroud]

Okay it is now that the return fixtures start to be played [some already have done so], so's a good opportunity to check the table against league results.
Below on the left is the table as at Sunday 17th January and to the right are teams results against appropriate opponent in table.
For the moment I'll leave it for others to comment.
[ps If any errors please be kind and inform me nicely. Hopefully none but by doing everything manually mistakes occasionally crop up.]

 

[Casey]

Crawley's loss to Grimsby and draw with Southend at Crawley look terrible results for a team on the edge of a play off spot.

Casey

 

[shoddycollins]

Oldham Athletic are terrible at home, Barrow are terrible away.

Bolton and Salford are both all about beating teams in the bottom third

Morecambe and Newport are both pretty poor when it comes to games against the top third.

Grimsby have some very unlikely looking wins, Port Vale are a total mixed bag.

 

[FGR Stroud]

Oldham Athletic are terrible at home, Barrow are terrible away.

Bolton and Salford are both all about beating teams in the bottom third

Morecambe and Newport are both pretty poor when it comes to games against the top third.

Grimsby have some very unlikely looking wins, Port Vale are a total mixed bag.

Of all the people on the forum, I knew you would be one of the first to comment.
I was debating whether to copy your promotion post from this morning onto this thread.
Promotion at this time of the season is just conjecture but it is good fun debating the subject.
Carlisle have mixed fortunes against other top teams although they are massive against teams lower in table.

 

[valefan16]

Ours doesn’t surprise, happy to play the top sides at home as they don’t sit deep which suits us as it did last year, the weaker ones sitting in and we find it hard to breakdown.

Away we’ve mostly looked far better against the poorer sides, looked streets ahead of Southend and Oldham on the day and pumped Bolton but come up short away to most of the top sides.

Salfords is interesting. Most not against the bottom half, very little against the top half and only won away against teams in the bottom 7.

 

[masi51]

Unless you are Salford, Bolton or Bradford.....possibly Exeter it is pointless you getting promotion as you wont attract the players to stay in lge 1 next season.
Crazy,Crazy league

 

[Boz]

Unless you are Salford, Bolton or Bradford.....possibly Exeter it is pointless you getting promotion as you wont attract the players to stay in lge 1 next season.
Crazy,Crazy league

Academic as so far Bolton have been unable to attract the players or manager to get them into L1.

 

[masi51]

Academic as so far Bolton have been unable to attract the players or manager to get them into L1.

Not sure you are right with either statement. Certainly Evatt will have to improve greatly on what he has shown thus far.
We certainly signed some utter dross last summer added to Evatt stubborn insistence in playing wingbacks despite not having any.
We have potted our DOF and Evatt is starting to pot some of his summer signings for players who being signed from Championship clubs. We have some great youngsters who will not count next season for the Salary cap and the likes of Doyle and Sarcevic who will be counted as having 68k Salaries
That gives us plenty wiggle room to sign players like Kieran Lee

 

[GTFCfish]

Grimsby have some very unlikely looking wins, Port Vale are a total mixed bag.

2 of those unlikely away wins came in back to back games too, won at Cheltenham on the Tuesday night then followed it up by winning at Orient on the Saturday.

 

[GTFCfish]

Crawley's loss to Grimsby and draw with Southend at Crawley look terrible results for a team on the edge of a play off spot.

Casey

Even worse is that you let Matt Green score for us that day too.

 

[GTFCfish]

I can’t be arsed to look at every teams results but I’m guessing nobody can get close to our tinpot goal tally of 8 goals at home in 12 games?

 

[shoddycollins]

Unless you are Salford, Bolton or Bradford.....possibly Exeter it is pointless you getting promotion as you wont attract the players to stay in lge 1 next season.
Crazy,Crazy league

Don't know about that. I feel a club with a good enough squad. With several players who would probably be making the step up anyway can keep those and attract players on the basis of putting together a promotion challenging squad.

 

[Casey]

Even worse is that you let Matt Green score for us that day too.

Re reading my post it comes across as arrogant. It wasnt meant to be and I apologise.

It was just we have taken 1 point from the bottom two teams at home...and I quite like Matt Green.

Casey

 

[Casey]

...and speaking of arrogant.

Masi51; most teams in league 2 would struggle in league 1 but if Accrington and Wycombe can survive and prosper there is hope for all of us.

Casey

 

[valefan16]

League One doesn’t need massive changes all the time, we finished 9th in our first season back at that level and didn’t make massive changes, large parts of the main bulk of the squad remained the same as the promotion season apart from adding in Chris Lines, Carl Dickinson and Gavin Tomlin.

Granted Jordan Hugill came through from the development squad we had running at the time but it isn’t impossible.

Surprised Swindon are struggling but did lose some big players and always risky when your reliant as much on loan players, Northampton were not really a normal case and probably the weakest to get promotion due to the circumstances. Plymouth and the Trainspotters are doing steadily enough with the step up.

No reason anyone who goes up can’t compete and may even be easier with the wage caps making club size less of a factor.

 

[GTFCfish]

Re reading my post it comes across as arrogant. It wasnt meant to be and I apologise.

It was just we have taken 1 point from the bottom two teams at home...and I quite like Matt Green.

Casey

It doesn’t come across as arrogant as what you said is true, if we had to play those 3 away games again now that we somehow won we would lose all 3 comfortably.

 

[masi51]

...and speaking of arrogant.

Masi51; most teams in league 2 would struggle in league 1 but if Accrington and Wycombe can survive and prosper there is hope for all of us.

Casey

its not arrogant its fact......you are losing your best players this window and you are not in the top 3
The clubs i mentioned could hold on to there better players unless a stupid offer came along.
Carlisle will get plundered this summer promoted or not. Too many players out of contract who will want more money. The Carlisle next season will not be as good whatever league they are in.
Same unfortunatly for Newport, Crawley, Cheltenham....FGR may survive with investment

 

[chipmunx]

its not arrogant its fact......you are losing your best players this window and you are not in the top 3
The clubs i mentioned could hold on to there better players unless a stupid offer came along.
Carlisle will get plundered this summer promoted or not. Too many players out of contract who will want more money. The Carlisle next season will not be as good whatever league they are in.
Same unfortunatly for Newport, Crawley, Cheltenham....FGR may survive with investment

luckily for Bolton they don't have many players other than Doyle and Sarcevic who other clubs will try to plunder either... whatever league they are in next season.

 

[FGR Stroud]

After looking at the table and results, here is my opinion for season end.

Carlisle have a mixed bag of future fixtures. They have not travelled well against other promotion rivals.

Newport have 'on paper' a decent run of games against promotion rivals with six home homes against the top nine clubs and only three away games against same rivals.

Current inform team Cambridge might look at table with pleasure. They have five home games against rivals near bottom of table and must therefore be confident of a good points haul. Fixtures against rival promotion hopefuls is a mixed bag but alas for them they have plenty of banana skin away matches against mid-table teams.

FGR have more away games against promotion rivals with fewer games against teams fighting relegation than others.

Salford's future fixtures appear to be the most attractive of any team vying for promotion. They have many home games against teams near bottom of table.

Cheltenham, who many pundits earlier in season were claiming the best team in the league, have suddenly had a big stutter. Their remaining games are a mixed bag.

Leyton Orient are last team in a promotion play-off position. Their games left are also a mixed bag so it seems unlikely they will achieve auto-promotion.

Therefore looking at games left my forecast for auto-promotion are: Newport Cambridge & Salford.

Down at the bottom of table:
Southend have a horrible set of fixtures. They are currently going through a golden period but against teams in bottom half of table. Come May they could struggle to remain in EFL.

Grimsby are a real Jekyll & Hyde team. They've had some excellent results against good teams but some big losses. They have traditional strong support but alas with no spectators they will struggle to season end.

Stevenage have half decent chance of surviving, they do tend to draw games rather than lose.

Scunthorpe have plenty of home games against other relegation candidates and if they can start to draw a few away games rather than lose, they stand a decent chance of remaining a football league club.

My forecast for non-league are Southend and Stevenage.

 

[Robshep]

Academic as so far Bolton have been unable to attract the players or manager to get them into L1.

Don't waste your time on Masi51. He is the Trump of this forum. Talks crap, knows nothing but incapable of recognising either. Even has a gang of thugs on his side.

 

[FGR Stroud]

Betting odds:

Seems the bookies have more confidence in FGR than does me. Auto promotion they predict.
Carlisle and Newport are also good bets.
Obviously the play-offs are more a lottery but Cheltenham are bookies favourite.

Down at bottom end of table it looks like Grimsby and Southend are doomed to spend at least one season in NL.

 

[Son of Cod]

Re reading my post it comes across as arrogant. It wasnt meant to be and I apologise.

It was just we have taken 1 point from the bottom two teams at home...and I quite like Matt Green.

Casey

Didn't come across as arrogant at all, you were right! You were unlucky that you caught us on a rare good day.

If you like Matt Green, I'll hire a Zipcar and drive up to Cleethorpes from where I live in London and bring him back down to Crawley. The only thing you'd need to do is confirm some kind of payment amount. How much do you want us to give you?

 

[Son of Cod]

Unless you are Salford, Bolton or Bradford.....possibly Exeter it is pointless you getting promotion as you wont attract the players to stay in lge 1 next season.
Crazy,Crazy league

Agreed. Bolton and Bradford have superb recent L1 records.

 

[Chris FGR]

Well we've played one proper game against league 1 opposition this season, and got hit for 6. Not sure how we'd handle the step up, especially as we'll probably be selling a couple more of our better players, would be amazed if no one comes in for Godwin-Malife, Cadden or Adams although hopefully not this January.

Question is how big is the gap between the two leagues.

 

[Luke Imp]

In L1, the gap in budgets is bigger than L2 i.e. Accrington with, say, a £1.5m budget and Sunderland's at £20m+. You don't get that sort of disparity in L2. It's a mix of your Accrington, Burton, Rochdale, Wimbledon types but then your Portsmouth, Sunderland, Charlton, Ipswich ones as well.

It's no surprise that, generally speaking, promoted sides struggle more initially than a NL to L2 side (higher up, more teams probably get relegated first time to L1 from the Championship). Tranmere, Lincoln and MK did last season, Swindon and Northampton are this. Plymouth are just about picking up enough points but only just, Crewe doing well. MK are on the edge in their second season and Wycombe were struggling in their first in L1.

 

[shoddycollins]

Will anyone in L1 be able to lure players away from promoted sides with money given the salary caps? Unless you're skint I imagine most clubs at this level could make the step up to L1 salaries if they got promoted. If you've got a squad with 5 or 6 players who are attracting attention from L1 promotion chasers then would the players not think, they must already have the foundations of a decent L1 side and are more likely to be in a promotion challenge if they stay put and bring in a few extra, than if they become the 'few extra' to another club's promotion challenge.

I mean maybe not, but I don't think it's a foregone conclusion that a promoted team from L2 will struggle in L1 and/or be plundered in the summer. I think if people are saying a squad will be plundered then they're staying that squad already has good L1 level players and therefore seems a contradiction when people say they will definitely come straight back down.

 

[Moomin]

We can’t afford any more postponements really as we’ve only got one free Tuesday between now and May. Trouble is our game at Harrogate tomorrow is looking dodgy so that will add to the congestion.

I still think we will be in the play offs as a minimum (yay) but we need to bring in 2-3 good additions this month and start to build some momentum on the pitch too.

It will be interesting to see how the season pans out. Have to say Carlisle have surprised me and their recent recruitment should give them a decent chance of holding onto top 3. As for the other spots it could be anyone from about 10 clubs.

 

[masi51]

Don't waste your time on Masi51. He is the Trump of this forum. Talks crap, knows nothing but incapable of recognising either. Even has a gang of thugs on his side.

Trump is a multi Billionaire and had the most important job on earth
Doubt he has heard of Tranmere though

 

[masi51]

Agreed. Bolton and Bradford have superb recent L1 records.

yes we got promoted from lge one at the first time of asking 3 years ago
The last time we was in lge 1 before that we also got promoted
Put us on -12 points make us play with kids and Relegate us before the season is out and we have a relegation to go with those promotions

 

[masi51]

luckily for Bolton they don't have many players other than Doyle and Sarcevic who other clubs will try to plunder either... whatever league they are in next season.

Got a decent lad born in Barren. Only 20 seems a club or two will want him