Blueprint For Success?
Thursday, 28th Nov 2002 00:00

The Blueprint For Success?

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Forget FA Cup, Worthington Cup and LDV Trophy exits - we are now left with the real bread and butter stuff of 27 games to save our league souls (well, that and the FAW Premier Cup!)

So what do we need in reality? Well, 27 wins would come in quite handy at the moment but somehow I just have this nagging doubt that it may not be quite as easy for us to achieve that so what do we need? Let's have a look at the sides finishing in 22nd place over the past 7 years, since the bottom division was increased back to 24 teams.

As we can see quite clearly the average number of points needed would be 46 - although it has been as low as 41 or as high as 51 but let's work to 46 points as a starting block. That leaves us 27 games to amass 31 points. 14 games at the Vetch, 13 games on the road.

Now, we all know that we are not too good away from home (no win in nine months) so can we ensure safety at home? Well, we can when there are 42 points to play for. We can effectively win 9 games, draw the other 5 and we should have enough for safety. Add to that the odd point away from home and we are there with a bit to spare. But in reality could this happen? So far at the Vetch we have amassed 12 points from 9 games at the Vetch - 1.33 per game. If we were to keep that up for the rest of the season then we would have a further 19 points - still 12 short of the target we are talking about. Away from home we have just 3 points from 11 games - that is the main reason why we are in the position we are in. We all know that we will have to generate some extra points per game to reach that safety barrier so let's take a look at the fixtures that are left and see how we are going to do it.

There is nothing scientific about this method other than assuming which games we should be looking to win, which games we should get a draw out of and which games we may not, at this stage, expect to win.

The way that I have looked at remaining fixtures is to split the division as it stands into 3 - Top 8, 9th to 16th and 17th or below. If we play at home to someone in the bottom third, we should win - if we play away to someone in the same sector we should get a point. If we play at home to someone in the middle third, we should get a point, playing away to a similar team will result in a loss. Playing home or away to anyone in the top third is a defeat.

So let's look at the remaining fixtures on this basis: -

Looking at it in more simplistic terms - the green games are must win - yellow is can't lose (a win would be nice), peach - likely to lose but a point would be a bonus and purple we are very unlikely to get anything.

This would leave our final league standing looking like this: -

And working on the 46 points for safety, we fall 6 short of that target. What we have done here then is to pick 6 games against the lowest placed teams where we would expect to get nothing and if we can get a point from each of these then we will be safe.

Simple mathematics? Not really but a way to look at the target that has to be set now by the management team. I will keep these statistics and update them after games have been played to see how the performances are changing. And, of course, the league positions of opponents will also have an effect on the results that we should be achieving.

So, there you have it - the blueprint for success or just more meaningless statistics?

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