Championship Tonight's Championship Games - 4th March

 
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Season-defining for Plymouth. Lose today and they are 6 points from safety. A draw keeps them at least within reach.

For our sake, we could also do with them at least taking a point too, as a Hull win would leave them only 2 points behind us.

Of course, we want (and would expect) Burnley to do a job at Cardiff, while a Preston win would probably be in our interest too. Unlikely as it is now that Swansea make the drop, keeping them close would be handy.
 
A Burnley win and a draw between Hull and Plymouth would be ideal. Don't really care about the other two, to be honest - I'm in the 'trenches' mindset at the moment, and just want the teams right at the bottom to pick up as few points as possible.

Because of that, if there's a winner in the Hull Plymouth game I think I'd prefer a Hull to win to deprive Plymouth of anything.
 
Not sure I agree with the 'Hull v Plymouth - draw' consensus.

If we're really in the mix it's all about minimal points for the current bottom 3 above all else.

Even if Hull were to lose to Plymouth, they could still (easily) be within two points of us (with better GD) if they beat us next week.

Whereas Plymouth (effectively 9 points off us with GD) can continue to eek their way towards us with a point, but a defeat is another game gone with no progress.

It's on us to sort out our own form of course, but if we're genuinely nervous on that score then we have to hope that Plymouth, Luton and Derby continue to lose - even if that means we're overhauled by the likes of Cardiff, Stoke and Hull.
 
SirAndyOfCrosby said:
Not sure I agree with the 'Hull v Plymouth - draw' consensus.

If we're really in the mix it's all about minimal points for the current bottom 3 above all else.

Even if Hull were to lose to Plymouth, they could still (easily) be within two points of us (with better GD) if they beat us next week.

Whereas Plymouth (effectively 9 points off us with GD) can continue to eek their way towards us with a point, but a defeat is another game gone with no progress.

It's on us to sort out our own form of course, but if we're genuinely nervous on that score then we have to hope that Plymouth, Luton and Derby continue to lose - even if that means we're overhauled by the likes of Cardiff, Stoke and Hull.
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I think I agree with this. There's a very valid argument for the bottom three to just keep losing, it doesn't matter one bit if we drop places in the process. We are looking at 21st place, nothing else matters, and the quickest way for that to be secured with our current form is for those three to make no serious progress on us. This said, I don't think a draw in the Plymouth match tonight is any great disaster for us. The worst outcome is undoubtedly a Plymouth win. As you say, Hull have a second bite of the cherry at home to us next week - lose tonight and they can still get back on track against us.
 
For the avoidance of any doubt, I'd like to finish as high as possible. I think the optics for looking back on this season, and for potential recruitment this summer, are far better for finishing 18th vs finishing 21st.

That said, the reason for my thinking above is best understood with a couple of hypothetical scenarios. In both, we finish with a points tally of, say, 44 points (plausible).

In scenario 1, the likes of Hull are beating the likes of Plymouth. They sail past us, and maybe even make 50 points. However, the current bottom 3 struggle to get to 40 points, let alone the mid-40s. Safe.

In scenario 2, the likes of Hull drop points to the likes of Plymouth. One of the bottom three (it only needs one, remember) pull out 4 or 5 wins from their remaining games. The season ends with as many as half a dozen sides failing to get to 50 points, but we go down.

Now I may be scarred by 2006 here, but I recall us sleep walking to relegation. We weren't horrific (in relative terms). It was a perfect combination of dropping sloppy points whilst others sorted their act out.

Don't get me wrong, the best way for us to stay up is to sort ourselves out and win some games, maybe even get to 50 points - and finish as high as possible.

But the second best way is for the most horrific sides to continue to be just that.
 
SirAndyOfCrosby said:
For the avoidance of any doubt, I'd like to finish as high as possible. I think the optics for looking back on this season, and for potential recruitment this summer, are far better for finishing 18th vs finishing 21st.

That said, the reason for my thinking above is best understood with a couple of hypothetical scenarios. In both, we finish with a points tally of, say, 44 points (plausible).

In scenario 1, the likes of Hull are beating the likes of Plymouth. They sail past us, and maybe even make 50 points. However, the current bottom 3 struggle to get to 40 points, let alone the mid-40s. Safe.

In scenario 2, the likes of Hull drop points to the likes of Plymouth. One of the bottom three (it only needs one, remember) pull out 4 or 5 wins from their remaining games. The season ends with as many as half a dozen sides failing to get to 50 points, but we go down.

Now I may be scarred by 2006 here, but I recall us sleep walking to relegation. We weren't horrific (in relative terms). It was a perfect combination of dropping sloppy points whilst others sorted their act out.

Don't get me wrong, the best way for us to stay up is to sort ourselves out and win some games, maybe even get to 50 points - and finish as high as possible.

But the second best way is for the most horrific sides to continue to be just that.
Click to expand...

Completely agree with this thinking, and you've explained what I'd laid out much better than I did.

I'd said I'd prefer a draw, but part of the thinking with that is that a win for Hull tonight might make it more difficult for us on Wednesday.

So many weird little intangibles, but you're absolutely right that points is the priority (more of them for us, less for the rest!), and then we finish where we finish.
 
I think our performance v Coventry was so much better than recent games that there is optimism for us picking up enough points from our remaining games. But for tonight a Burnley win is massive because Cardiff have the easiest run in and keeping them down there is paramount. The others I don’t worry about as the points we should still get will have us finishing above all of them. It just looks a bit daunting right now having not picked up anything at the weekend. There is no need to panic.
 
SirAndyOfCrosby said:
For the avoidance of any doubt, I'd like to finish as high as possible. I think the optics for looking back on this season, and for potential recruitment this summer, are far better for finishing 18th vs finishing 21st.

That said, the reason for my thinking above is best understood with a couple of hypothetical scenarios. In both, we finish with a points tally of, say, 44 points (plausible).

In scenario 1, the likes of Hull are beating the likes of Plymouth. They sail past us, and maybe even make 50 points. However, the current bottom 3 struggle to get to 40 points, let alone the mid-40s. Safe.

In scenario 2, the likes of Hull drop points to the likes of Plymouth. One of the bottom three (it only needs one, remember) pull out 4 or 5 wins from their remaining games. The season ends with as many as half a dozen sides failing to get to 50 points, but we go down.

Now I may be scarred by 2006 here, but I recall us sleep walking to relegation. We weren't horrific (in relative terms). It was a perfect combination of dropping sloppy points whilst others sorted their act out.

Don't get me wrong, the best way for us to stay up is to sort ourselves out and win some games, maybe even get to 50 points - and finish as high as possible.

But the second best way is for the most horrific sides to continue to be just that.
Click to expand...
Great post. 2006 was complacency, pure and simple. Those below us were just too bad. We had Jim Smith.
It simply couldn’t happen til it did.

Quite simply we should not be in this position at all with better decision making.
 
I'd say the only really important thing tonight is that Plymouth don't win.

Other than a home game against Derby, their remaining games are quite reminiscent of ours - some mediocre-to-poor teams left but all away from home; a bit of a murderers row for their remaining home games (their last three home games are Sheffield United, Coventry and Leeds)

They're not going to catch us without winning some games and tonight is one of the most obvious opportunities for them to pick up three points. Things are really going to start looking desperate for them if they don't.
 
Surely the ideal result for us is teams below us to draw (if they're playing each other) or lose if they're playing top teams.
We would definitely wan't Cardiff to lose to Burnley.
Hull v Plymouth to draw as it denies them both max points and harder to catch us.
Preston v Swansea to draw so they don't get away from us.
Millwall v Snakes - draw.
 
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