It has become a really difficult one to work out, we have all got very excited with 9 wins in a row and us getting to the edges of the play offs. But it needs almost as good a run to stay there, and most importantly definitely not lose to your promotion rivals to stay in with a chance.
The reality is that 16 points from the first 16 games has hurt us and left us with too much to do. And having got to a position where we may actually create a miracle we have suddenly bottled it when the pressure of knowing it could actually be done became a reality. The free flowing football when not under pressure has stopped and the team is more anxious about not conceding a goal to lose a game rather than score 2 or 3 in the first 30 minutes and put the game to bed. And the managers tactics and team selections seem to be getting muddled in this mindset too. At the moment we have stopped passing the ball with the same accuracy, stopped getting forward quickly, stopped putting crosses in the box, stopped getting decent shots on goal, we suddenly look less fit than the opposition and have become fearful of what they can offer rather than imposing what we can do to them.
But even when we were winning every game the massive and unnatural contribution to goals coming from our full backs maybe was masking the fact that there was a lack of contribution from the rest of the team to really threaten a serious promotion challenge. And now the full backs' contribution has unsurprisingly dropped off no one else has really stepped up to take charge and make their own telling contribution, nothing from Brannagan, nothing from Kelly, nothing from Winnall, nothing from Sykes, nothing from Forde, very little from Henry, and a really bad patch from Taylor, a bad 15 minutes in a game for Agyei has seen him out of the team despite him contributing with goals and assists before that. But really we can only complain that we only got 16 points from our first 16 games, even if we had underachieved and only got 22 we would be comfortably in the play offs. The early and significant underachievement unfortunately has still outweighed the recent overachievement of this team and the effort of catching up seems to be weighing the team down now. We should still be surprised that we are in with a chance.