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I tend to agree. It’s not gonna decide anything but we need to beat them. If anything, we owe them one after they turned us over in January, due to our own shortcomings more than anything. Win, and we can look upwards. Lose, and it’s a psychological blow as much as anything. They’re my local team. My son was born in Harrogate so that’s his team and rightly so (means I pay close attention) but they are eminently beatable if we exploit their weaknesses. They’re good going forward and they have some technically gifted players including Armstrong and Muldoon who are a threat but they ‘overpass’…..they go sideways and backwards without incision, they are disorganised at the back, they lack physicality, they leave huge spaces in wide positions, especially on the break, so we must capitalise. If we dither and don’t show up, they’ll hurt us.

Quoted from Rodley Mariner

It's not though is it? Would be disappointing to lose but in no way is it a 'must not lose' game.

Surely every match should be treat as a must not lose game, no one ever won anything thinking its okay to lose the odd game!

I'm a right drama queen but even I'm now 100% confident we won't go down

Quoted from Azimuth

Surely every match should be treat as a must not lose game, no one ever won anything thinking its okay to lose the odd game!

We going to do this thread every match then?

Christ what an overeaction

Come on, let’s just thoroughly de-bunk this idea that we face any tangible threat of relegation this season. Results on Saturday, not least Town’s, really improved the complexion of things.

For the sake of the argument, I’m going to assume Rochdale are down, or at the very least won’t be catching us - they’d need to pick up 16 more points than us to do so, with 4 fewer games to play.

Assuming no swings in goal difference for simplicity, for Town to get relegated ALL of the following would have to happen as an absolute minimum:

- Crewe pick up 1 more points than us with 2 fewer games
- Colchester pick up 2 more points than us with 5 fewer games
- Newport pick up 2 more points than us with 2 fewer games
- Gillingham pick up 7 more points than us with 2 fewer games
- Harrogate pick up 8 more points than us with 2 fewer games
- Hartlepool pick up 10 more points than us with 4 fewer games
- Crawley pick up 13 more points than us with 1 fewer game

As long as any one of those things doesn’t happen, we are safe. For it to even come close, we’d have to absolutely stink out our last 18 games, and there’s just no evidence to suggest we’ll do that.

Whilst we’ve not had a great run of form since the Autumn, we’ve never really gone long periods not picking up points. We’ve played 28 games so far, so if we split that up into 4 equal quarters our respective points total is as follows:

Q1 - 12
Q2 - 11
Q3 - 4
Q4 - 9

Alright, so we’ve certainly not been as good recently as we were in the first half of our games so far this season, but if we take our average PPG from our last, slightly underwhelming 14, and extrapolate across our remaining 18 matches, we’d hit a projected 52.7 points.

Personally, I think we’re capable of doing better than that, especially given we appear to be approaching a fully fit squad for the first time this season.

But we won’t need to. Too many teams who are demonstrably poorer than us need to do substantially better than us, and they won’t.

A win tomorrow night would be welcome, not just because it makes one of the above variables even more unlikely but because I do think we’re better than Harrogate. If we lose though, it will be frustrating, annoying even, but not a disaster.

We’re not going down, nor will we find ourselves close to doing so.

Excellent analysis Poojah. I anticipate the last 6-8 games of the season will see us both safe and unable to hit the play offs. Something that we haven't had whilst Hurst has been in sole charge (I think!?).

These games should reveal a lot about his plans for next season. Who is being released. Formations. Who will play the 10 role. Can Taylor give us another season.

Look at the bookmakers odds, 200 to one against. 4 more wins will see us safe.Hartlepool would need to win more than half of their remaining fixtures to go ahead of us. The Northampton win was fantastic. Utm

Quoted from smokey111

Excellent analysis Poojah. I anticipate the last 6-8 games of the season will see us both safe and unable to hit the play offs. Something that we haven't had whilst Hurst has been in sole charge (I think!?).

These games should reveal a lot about his plans for next season. Who is being released. Formations. Who will play the 10 role. Can Taylor give us another season.

If we we use last season’s League Two table as a very rudimentary benchmark, Oldham finished second bottom on 38 points whilst Mansfield finished 7th on 77 (Sutton missing out on the play-offs with 76).

We’d beat Oldham’s tally with a single win between now and the end of the season, whilst reaching 77 would require us to more than double the points total we’ve accrued during our first 28 games with our last 18.

Seasons of course vary and points requirements change, but I think that’s a reasonable argument to suggest we’ll be playing League Two football next season.

I do however think that finishing 13th, or slightly above, is doable. We haven’t finished above 14th since 2006 so that, coupled with having reached the 5th round of the FA Cup at least, would represent tangible progress. Not just to us, but to the wider footballing world.

This group won’t take us down, they’ll not take us up but I think it’s important we finish the season on a good run for several reasons, I’ve said all along we’d finish in between 16th and 12th, considering how broken things had got I’ll take that.

Personally I’d be delighted with 4 points out of the next 2 games.

Our points per game number at the moment is 1.29, carrying on at that average would take us to 59 points for the season.

Compare that to the two current worst in the league (Rochdale 0.66 and Hartlepool 0.84), if they carry on a similar vain they will finish with around 30 points and 38 points respectively.

That would take a huge swing to even be in a relegation battle, let alone to go down.

It’s not ‘must win’ but it’s important insofar as another three points would allow us to play with increasing freedom in the coming months.

I’ve no idea of the stats but I’m pretty sure that we’ve been relegated more than most in the last twenty years so surely a little self inflicted paranoia is understandable?

We're 15 points clear of Rochdale with 4 games in hand with a 20 goal better goal difference. That's one team that ain't catching us. We have games in hand and a far better goal difference than those just above them.

Stop being so bloody negative!!

We will accumulate 55-60 points imo no worries this season like others have said

Top half of the table with a few good performances at home would be nice..

We are in no realistic danger of going down but Harrogate have a good recent away record last three are a win at Carlisle and draws at Hartlepool and Salford so expecting another long night.

Quoted from crusty ole pie

Win tomorrow and we go 10 points clear of 4th from bottom Harrogate lose and the gap dwindles to four points a must not lose match in my eyes

Not that it's going to bother us, but you do realise only the bottom 2 go down?

We wont lose tomorrow
They did us in away game
Come on Town!

There was a thread before the Crewe game titled "The next 6 games", and I said then that we only need to average a point a game until the end of the season to be well safe and that 2 wins from the 6 games would keep us on track.

We have 2 wins from 4 since then, so anything from the next 2 will put us further beyond the curve. Also since then, the bottom 2 haven't made any headway, so we are even further from them now and with every passing game, the task gets harder for those below us.

Have to say that our away form is pretty good overall, and it's the home form that's killing us. Desperately want to see a win tomorrow.

Front foot, straight into em, get Armstrong and Muldoon snapped nice & early, couple each for McAtee and O’Neil, no píssing about tomorrow please.

Hope the FA Cup semifinal doesn't affect out league form.

Regardless of the need ..or not....for points, I genuinely hope the players feel the desire to put Boxing Day right.

Not a must win .But please can we win at home .Fed up walking out of BP depressed

I think it's a must win if we're going to make those play offs again. 😉

Bookies have us at 200/1 and some at 250/1 to get relegated. Not often bookies are wrong!

I'm in the optimistic camp...

I always feel there's 2 key milestones when you're looking over your shoulder:

40 points means you'll probably survive but it'll be tight (we could be over this by Saturday night)
50 points means you'll be well clear of it

We have 18 games to go and are currently getting 1.29 points per game so we can expect another 23 points and that would be 59 points in total - miles away from trouble.

And finally, in our last 6 games we have had a 50% win average so if we kept that up we would get 27 points and clear 60 for the season.

And we're still in the cup!!!

We’re not going to trouble either end of the table this year which is a fantastic achievement and a huge improvement on 7th in the conference last year.

Hopefully, we have a few dead rubber matches towards the end of the season so we can rest anyone with niggly injuries, try new tactics, blood a few youngsters and start the recruitment process early.

The fantastic end to last season must have been physically and mentally draining. Couple this with a short pre season and a jump in quality in leagues and this was always going to be a season about consolidation and getting ourselves in a great position for next season.

Quoted from Marinerdan

We’re not going to trouble either end of the table this year which is a fantastic achievement and a huge improvement on 7th in the conference last year.

Hopefully, we have a few dead rubber matches towards the end of the season so we can rest anyone with niggly injuries, try new tactics, blood a few youngsters and start the recruitment process early.

The fantastic end to last season must have been physically and mentally draining. Couple this with a short pre season and a jump in quality in leagues and this was always going to be a season about consolidation and getting ourselves in a great position for next season.

We actually finished 6th last year.

Quoted from Les Brechin

We actually finished 6th last year.

Good point!

I had been somewhat underwhelmed initially by our transfer business at the end of the transfer window and was beginning to look at the table wondering if we would get sucked into a relegation battle. But In Emmanuel we seem to have got a player of quality and I think Lloyd has a bit more about him than the likes of Pepple, Simmonds and even Richardson.

As with the consensus on here something would have to go dramatically wrong for a relegation fight now. The come from behind win at Northampton was perhaps an unexpected 3 pts but huge.If we go by 50 pts as a target for survival means 14 pts from 18 games. Town have more than enough in the locker to pick up pts here and there. We are just too inconsistent to make a late push for the play offs i think.

But I would have taken a mid to mid lower half finish at the start of the season.

Hopefully having maybe banked some money from cup runs, the McAtee sale and healthy gate receipts we can push on in the summer and continue to improve the squad to be looking upwards next season.

I'd certainly hope for a top-half finish this season, even if we aren't able to get close to the play-offs. A positive goal difference with more wins than losses would also be nice!

A short run of wins and we're back in the play-off mix, as unbelievable as it sounds.

This is a poor league and no-one outside the top 7 is in great form. I don't think we're anywhere near consistent enough to mount a challenge, but stranger things have happened and a place is definitely there for the taking.

Be nice to go unbeaten at home between now and the end of the season and make BP a ground clubs don’t want to visit for football reasons rather than geography.

Some entertaining and attacking football would also be good but I’d settle for winning.

Quoted from Lincoln Mariner 56

Be nice to go unbeaten at home between now and the end of the season and make BP a ground clubs don’t want to visit for football reasons rather than geography.

Some entertaining and attacking football would also be good but I’d settle for winning.

We need to improve consistency, especially at home where you'd expect our form to be better but we always struggle at home for some reason. I don't know what it is, the chilly sea breeze or the cold uncaring fans who barely make a peep apart from 2-3 minutes of singing after a goal and if the referee makes a poor decision which thankfully happens a lot and gets the crowd excited. Besides that they play in silence for most of the game with the odd foghorn in the main stand sounding off some criticism of the easiest target, usually Efete. At least away they have a noisy following that will get behind them as away games are more like a carnival atmosphere compared to the library of home games with hushed discussion between goals.

Quoted from Marinerdan

We’re not going to trouble either end of the table this year which is a fantastic achievement and a huge improvement on 7th in the conference last year.

Hopefully, we have a few dead rubber matches towards the end of the season so we can rest anyone with niggly injuries, try new tactics, blood a few youngsters and start the recruitment process early.

The fantastic end to last season must have been physically and mentally draining. Couple this with a short pre season and a jump in quality in leagues and this was always going to be a season about consolidation and getting ourselves in a great position for next season the FA Cup Final.

Edited for you. :)

Now we are realiscally safe im hoping the pressure on the home form comes off a bit as it must be terrible hanging around the players necks.
And as others have said it would be nice for a couple of youth to play roles. essell and Kouri for instance.

Sometimes you will never know if someone could hit the level of the league without playing them.

Quoted from BottesfordMariner

I had been somewhat underwhelmed initially by our transfer business at the end of the transfer window and was beginning to look at the table wondering if we would get sucked into a relegation battle. But In Emmanuel we seem to have got a player of quality and I think Lloyd has a bit more about him than the likes of Pepple, Simmonds and even Richardson.

As with the consensus on here something would have to go dramatically wrong for a relegation fight now. The come from behind win at Northampton was perhaps an unexpected 3 pts but huge.If we go by 50 pts as a target for survival means 14 pts from 18 games. Town have more than enough in the locker to pick up pts here and there. We are just too inconsistent to make a late push for the play offs i think.

But I would have taken a mid to mid lower half finish at the start of the season.

Hopefully having maybe banked some money from cup runs, the McAtee sale and healthy gate receipts we can push on in the summer and continue to improve the squad to be looking upwards next season.

50 points for survival is a bit pessimistic - Oldham got 38 last season (Scunny 26), the season before we went down with 43 and Southend with 45, Rochdale look like they may struggle to get 40 this year.

Quoted from diehardmariner

A short run of wins and we're back in the play-off mix, as unbelievable as it sounds.

This is a poor league and no-one outside the top 7 is in great form. I don't think we're anywhere near consistent enough to mount a challenge, but stranger things have happened and a place is definitely there for the taking.

There is always one team who has a run and roars into the play offs just as there is always one team who loses form at just the wrong time and limps into the play offs after looking like promotion candidates earlier in the season.

In my heart of hearts I don't think we will roar into the play offs.

Quoted from BobbyCummingsTackle

There is always one team who has a run and roars into the play offs just as there is always one team who loses form at just the wrong time and limps into the play offs after looking like promotion candidates earlier in the season.

In my heart of hearts I don't think we will roar into the play offs.

Last season, we roared into the playoffs and Chesterfield were the leaders who stumbled over the line

Play offs or no play offs, it is imperative that we finish as high as possible. I've no doubt some potential signings look at us as a risk. A solid finish, stable management/ownership and squad will help enormously.

Quoted from Mariner_09

Last season, we roared into the playoffs and Chesterfield were the leaders who stumbled over the line

Exactly! It's not impossible we can do it again, just unlikely. But (just imagine), if we won 6 of our next 8 games the world would look very different and we'd still have 10 games to go.

We're currently 13 points away from the play offs. I think we were 10 points away from them last season when we began to motor (that is a vague memory and I'd be happy to be corrected). But our form had already improved by this time last year so had more points available.