06-04-2022, 09:05 PM
I think we have probably gone a little bit backwards on balance, though overall not by much. As someone posted recently on another thread in some detail, a significant factor is that this season the division has been much more stretched than last, at both ends of the table. The leading teams (two of them relegated from the Championship) have so far all gained relatively more points this season than last season. In 2020-21 no team averaged two points a game, this season three are doing so. At the bottom, last season the fourth from bottom team averaged marginally above a point a game, this season none is coming very close to that, and the bottom two, Doncaster and Crewe, are way off. With our last seven games, I would reckon we have a decent chance of winning the majority of them and conceivably could equal the number of wins of last season – I’d be fairly confident that overall we’ll have lost fewer. Fifteen more points would put us on 75, which last season would have got us a play-off place. Maybe that’s clutching at straws, but we’ve seen in the past how fortunes can change from one season to another, both at Pompey and elsewhere. Who’d have put money on Plymouth going from 18th last season to 4th this time?