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Post by Amber Aleman on Feb 24, 2016 22:58:51 GMT
As Dos mentioned in his (remarkably restrained!) post-match interview last Saturday, we've now played two-thirds of our league fixtures (28 down, 14 to go). So a good stage to take stock of where we are.
A lot can change in the last two months of a season, but Ebbsfleet are shaping up to finish as champions with us and Maidstone battling it out for runners-up spot. We're currently 3rd in the league table and 2nd in the form table while Maidstone are a place above us in each. Our match at the Gallagher Stadium on 5 April could be pivotal.
We do have quite a tough run-in, with six of our last ten scheduled games against sides in contention for the title or a play-off place. Those fixtures are Gosport away, Truro away, Maidstone away, Margate away, Ebbsfleet home and Oxford City away. The number of away games in that run might cause a few palpitations, but remember that our away form in the league is better than at GGL. If we do finish second or third then we could well face a swift return visit to Gosport, Truro, Margate or Oxford on the evening of Wednesday 4 May in the first leg of the play-off semis (with the second leg at Sutton on Sunday 8th). The only other club we look likely to meet then is Dartford (who we've already played twice) - rather closer than the other four!
In the shorter term we've got a tricky-looking home game against in-form Margate this Saturday, then two matches against struggling sides, St Albans (A) and Weston (H), before the trip to Gosport on 19 March. We may need to harvest quite a few points from those next three games as insurance against the matches that follow.
Can we overhaul Ebbsfleet? Twelve points is a big gap to close this late in the season, although we do have two games in hand - and a better goal difference. Their run-in looks easier than ours, but if the gap is six points or less by the time they come to GGL on 16 April then things could get interesting. They currently have just one remaining fixture after that match - while we have two!
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Post by Andy K on Feb 25, 2016 11:00:43 GMT
Using the good old footballwebpages predicted final table, it puts us finishing 5 points behind Ebbsfleet (the same margin that we were behind Eastleigh 2 seasons ago), and facing a midweek trip to Gosport. Maidstone and Dartford battle it out in the other semi. Personally I can't see Margate in there - they've got really good form, but having played 3 (or in some cases 4) games more and not yet being in a play-off spot may be a bit too far. I certainly can see Truro or Oxford crashing the party though. Just remember though, not even Ebbsfleet are mathematically safe from relegation (at time of writing, 69 points are needed to make sure 20th place (Havant) can't overtake them
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Post by localboy86 on Feb 25, 2016 12:08:09 GMT
So into the final third we go or the business end of the season as its frequently called. On the face of it we look to have a challenging run-in with several tough away games still to play over the next two months plus a box-office home game against Ebbsfleet to look forward to.
Not exactly an ambitious prediction of mine but I can't see us finishing any lower than third - it's certainly going to be an interesting couple of months ahead. However, I still haven't ruled us out of winning the title, though we'd probably have to win 11 or 12 games out of the 14 we have left to play.
In terms of other teams vying for the play-offs from us downwards, I fancy Dartford to be in there, not too sure on Gosport so I'll go with Truro to jump in there too (never saw that coming at the start of the season). I have to agree with you Andy K about Margate not quite making it as they've played more games.
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amberchoc
1st team Player
Blessed is the person who having nothing to say abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.
Posts: 1,495
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Post by amberchoc on Feb 25, 2016 12:12:49 GMT
Using the good old footballwebpages predicted final table, it puts us finishing 5 points behind Ebbsfleet (the same margin that we were behind Eastleigh 2 seasons ago), and facing a midweek trip to Gosport. Maidstone and Dartford battle it out in the other semi. Personally I can't see Margate in there - they've got really good form, but having played 3 (or in some cases 4) games more and not yet being in a play-off spot may be a bit too far. I certainly can see Truro or Oxford crashing the party though. Just remember though, not even Ebbsfleet are mathematically safe from relegation (at time of writing, 69 points are needed to make sure 20th place (Havant) can't overtake them At the risk of being pedantic, Ebbsfleet ARE actually mathematically safe from relegation. It's a common mistake to simply look at the team third from bottom, work out the maximum points they can acquire and base that on whether another team can get relegated. What needs to be taken into consideration, however, is that for every 3 points gained by a team below Ebbsfleet, 3 points are lost by another team. It's not mathematically possible for 19 teams to gain sufficient points to overhaul them. I could go into further detail to prove it, but it would be incredibly boring. More importantly, Sutton are NOT mathematically safe yet, but 10 more points (max) would do it!
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Post by Del on Feb 25, 2016 19:25:09 GMT
The unfortunate thing about all this is if we had taken maximum points against Bath & HH The league title would be back in our own hands !
A lot will happen between now & the end of the season and the pressure is building on Ebbsfleet.
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Post by Amber Aleman on Feb 25, 2016 23:02:18 GMT
The unfortunate thing about all this is if we had taken maximum points against Bath & HH The league title would be back in our own hands ! A lot will happen between now & the end of the season and the pressure is building on Ebbsfleet. It was the number of points we dropped in the first third of the season that allowed Ebbsfleet to build up such a big lead over us. Since then our form has been at least as good as theirs.
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Post by os on Feb 26, 2016 0:40:15 GMT
well 2 yrs ago today we were 15pts behind Bromley having played 27 matches with no games in hand. We were chasing Eastleigh too, but we overtook Bromley and failed by 5pts to overhaul Eastleigh. This 12 gap with 2 matches in hand and ebbsfleet still to play is actually chicken feed in comparison.
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kbb2
Spectator
Posts: 10
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Post by kbb2 on Feb 26, 2016 7:47:57 GMT
Looking at the fixtures shows that Ebbsfleet play four games from now up to March 8th compared to two for us which I think will have a huge bearing on the final outcome. If they were to pick up four maximums then our task would be damn near impossible. Revisit this chat after the 8th !
Kbb
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Post by sallycat on Feb 26, 2016 7:49:44 GMT
I always like to say there is no place for "ifs" in football (particularly of the retrospective variety). It's always tempting to look at what might have been, but I find it more constructive to look at what we can achieve going forward
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Post by Andy K on Feb 26, 2016 11:59:47 GMT
As Dos often says "a season isn't won and lost on 1 result" and every season we will get draws that should have been wins. I'm thinking of it as where we were this time last year. We were sitting 15th, having lost 10 games and having a total of 37 points - that total would have actually put us in 11th this season. Cup interest ended long ago and we were marking time till the end of the season. We ended the season with 50 points out of 40 games, which we've passed already (in our 27th game at Basingstoke). Even if we don't overhaul Ebbsfleet, compared to last year I'd say it's been pretty successful.
Could be worse - you could be a Basingstoke or Havant fan - both were in the play offs last year and now both are struggling to survive.
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