One spot left who will get it and where will we finish?

[Duvel 2,446]

Derby and Bristol City can be caught, not sure about the others.

 

Correct. Shall we change the thread title to 'Two spots left.....fair to say'?

 

Absolutely

[Neverbefore 10,942]

It isn’t quite in our hands, yet.

 

We just need to keep winning games. We have the squad to find a bit of consistency. And maybe Pulis is the man to deliver that.

 

Also, 9 goals in three games is pretty good going. Certainly not the boring football people say that Pulis plays.

 

He does play boring football.  Do you think his reputation is based on myth and legend?  You do watch football yeah?

 

It's great we've managed to get some goals in the last few games though, much needed change and it's what will give us a chance to win promotion this season.

 

You do love a condescending comment, don’t you Keith. I suspect his reputation for boring football has probably been exaggerated in a football world prone to hyperbolic views. I have never followed any of his team closely, so I don’t know for sure.

 

My actual point was... that the last three games have been far from boring.

 

In other news, hyperbolic is my favourite word.

[tylergomez 53]

It isn’t quite in our hands, yet.

 

We just need to keep winning games. We have the squad to find a bit of consistency. And maybe Pulis is the man to deliver that.

 

Also, 9 goals in three games is pretty good going. Certainly not the boring football people say that Pulis plays.

 

He does play boring football.  Do you think his reputation is based on myth and legend?  You do watch football yeah?

 

It's great we've managed to get some goals in the last few games though, much needed change and it's what will give us a chance to win promotion this season.

 

You do love a condescending comment, don’t you Keith. I suspect his reputation for boring football has probably been exaggerated in a football world prone to hyperbolic views. I have never followed any of his team closely, so I don’t know for sure.

 

My actual point was... that the last three games have been far from boring.

 

In other news, hyperbolic is my favourite word.

 

It is a good one. My current favourite is ‘enervate’

[Downsouth 6,327]

Derby and Bristol City can be caught, not sure about the others.

 

Correct. Shall we change the thread title to 'Two spots left.....fair to say'?

 

Absolutely

 

Opening title amended accordingly because of the current form of Derby, they are there to be caught certainly

[SmogDane 4,056]

Best scenario for us, it with Wolves and Fulham as 1st and 2nd and us up against Derby, Cardiff or Villa, as we can beat them all, if we play like this Friday.

 

Recent forms could mean something like that scenario, but only time will tell...

 

Ofc I would LOVE to see us win the last 11 and be 2nd come May, but I stopped believeing in Santa too :D ... And Fulham is the team i would LEAST meet in the play offs :P

 

Imagine us beating Villa 3-0 at Wembley with 2 goals from Traore and an OG from Albert :D :D :D

[smogsterking the Inspirati 2,490]

Best scenario for us, it with Wolves and Fulham as 1st and 2nd and us up against Derby, Cardiff or Villa, as we can beat them all, if we play like this Friday.

 

Recent forms could mean something like that scenario, but only time will tell...

 

Ofc I would LOVE to see us win the last 11 and be 2nd come May, but I stopped believeing in Santa too :D ... And Fulham is the team i would LEAST meet in the play offs :P

 

Imagine us beating Villa 3-0 at Wembley with 2 goals from Traore and an OG from Albert :D :D :D

To be honest I wouldn't be too bothered with Fulham in the play offs. With better finishing we would have beaten them at the Riverside. I would want to avoid Villa in the final just due to them having some big game players in their squad although I do like your scenario :). Still a long way to go in the season though but it's nice to finally have a complete performance to build on. I think the next 3 are very winnable games and it would be interesting to see where we are come Wolves at the end of the month.

[SouthernSmoggie 4,242]

Fulham really are on fire... 13 points out of 15 from Villa, Bristol C, Wolves, Derby & Sheff U. The addition of Mitrovic and return to full fitness of Cairney has made them arguably the divisions best team.

 

I hope they come 2nd so we can avoid a potential play off clash with them to be honest. Anyone else rather avoid another side ?

[Downsouth 6,327]

Well we now sit by our own merits in 6th spot and only 3 points behind Derby though there is an 8 goal difference between us and if only we had taken the three points against Sunderland then we would be breathing on Derby's shoulders.

 

Our impressive and best in the Championship points haul against bottom half teams continues now on 48 points but reality is we now MUST start beating those above and very close to us or at bare minimum gain some points in order to maintain where we are.

 

Wolves just after the I/B could be massively important to us results wise but should we write this one off as a loss and anything else a bonus? (personally I believe we may cause an upset)

 

So crunch games against Bristol City, Derby and Sheffield United to come and these are the must get some points games for Boro, two we have already lost to and one we have beaten albeit on the first day of the season.

 

Tricky games at Brentford and Ipswich to consider also and we can't write off Forest and Millwall both who have beaten us already this season.

 

Lot of work to do and how many of those games will we score first, Sky beginning to latch on with the fact that we win when we score first

[Humpty 3,261]

Good little run this but i'm not getting my hopes up. The Leeds game apart i've not been impressed with us this season and i certainly wouldn't fancy us against Villa, Fulham or Cardiff in a two leg game. Will re-evaluate in 5 games or so.

[Teacider 108]

Good little run this but i'm not getting my hopes up. The Leeds game apart i've not been impressed with us this season and i certainly wouldn't fancy us against Villa, Fulham or Cardiff in a two leg game. Will re-evaluate in 5 games or so.

 

Agreed. But we seem to be getting harder to beat than earlier in the season. 

 

For me the next 4 games are key, if we win 3 of the 4 (even if we lose to wolves) then we should be in the mix, which is more than I thought we'd be given where we were heading under monk. The Wolves games aside they are all winnable too... but knowing us we'll bottle it and lose a couple!

[Humpty 3,261]

You never know.

[Motor Mouth 255]

I would feel more confident if we had more goalscorers at present we seem to have dropped back into the single striker.

More goals are needed from the midfield and more goals are needed in set pieces from the central defenders.At present Ayala and Gibson just seem to be going through the motions of getting in the box at set pieces and not really doing any damage.Midfielders seem to be scared to take opportunities from outside of the box. Our main channel is to Bamford and he cannot be expected to do it all on his own.Howson Besic Downing and Traore need to start peppering the oppositions goalmouth and testing the oppositions goal keepers and defences.

We are making it far to easy they only have to mark Bamford and we are struggling.

[Borodane 6,301]

Downing had a few finishes against Brum where he was in a decent position although his shots were atrocious :) I also think Traore is getting better at trying to finish. It was his shot from outside the box that fell to bamford against Leeds. We know Howson can score some decent goals from around the box ie against Preston so I'd like to see it more often. I agree though that we could do with more goals from atttacking midfielders.

[SmogDane 4,056]

Ayala and Ben had good but wasted oportunities against Leeds aswell, and I guess the 2 of them plus Shotton might score at least 4 more goals before May.

 

But yeah, Traore is getting there and Downing is trying, although his efforts are close to embarrasing at points. Keep it low Stewey, don't blast it over every mf time....!

 

Howson can score too and Besic doesn't look like a scorer from his stats, but if he could adapt that skill, he would be even more class...

 

In general we need to take the long shot more often, to get the opositions defenders come more at us, instead of just marking Bamford and Traore... Would be too easy to read, if we don't mix it up with som threats from the distance.

[p_mards 1,365]

Bristol City have an easy looking away game to Burton this weekend, but other than them our play-off rivals have reasonably difficult looking fixtures so we're in a position where we could easily get a bit of breathing space from the pack of teams just behind us if we take advantage of our reasonably easy looking game v Barnsley this weekend. We have some difficult looking away trips against Brentford, Sheffield United and Derby(poor form atm but it will still be difficult) between now and the end of the season so we really need to make take 3 points at home to the relegation battling sides like Barnsley as a few points gap will make the play-off hunt slightly less stressful when we have to go away to our play-off rivals.