Burton Albion (A) Mar 2nd, 3pm

It’s not out of our hands even if they win their game in hand. Their next 2 fixtures are against Scunthorpe and Gillingham.
The results of those 2 games don’t matter to us because both teams can’t win each match and one of each of 'em has to drop at least 2 points. All 3 of those teams are within our reach.

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Irrespective of the arithmetic, it is in all of the clubs hands with so many games left. If Wimbledon win every game they will be safe, but it is very unlikely to happen.

There’s another round of fixtures before Bristol Rovers game in hand. We could get to that stage and a win isn’t enough to go above us … or we could get to that stage and already be in the bottom four.

Fleetwood is the latest massive game in a long list of massive games.

Easter period will be huge:

Got Southend home and Wycombe away so two mid table teams on the beach right there.

Bristol Rovers have Wimbledon away on the Easter Friday, Rochdale home on the Monday and also Bradford home on the previous Saturday (April 13th).

While Bristol Rovers have an apparently easy Easter, the rest of March is not so good for them - four away games and two at home. The home games are against Charlton and Luton.

Rovers have had some decent results recently (only 2 defeats in 12 games), yet they are still in the bottom four even after the 4-0 v Blackpool. Perhaps they will realise they just can’t get out of this…

Gillingham may also feel a little deflated after dropping two points in injury time on Saturday, and falling from 13th to 18th in the live table.

Clutching at straws?

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I think we are now in a straight mini league with Shrews, Gills, Oxford and Rovers.

The good news is the bottom three look done. Rochdale have just sacked their manager, Bradford can’t beat us with a man advantage and Wimbledon need 20 plus points from 11 games.

The bad news is the only team below us in that mini league are probably good enough to pull themselves out. I think Gills and Oxford are going to be much more our focus, that for me is the safety line, in my head we are a point behind.

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A big point in our favour is that Rovers have to play Gills in 2weeks time
Rovers also play Scunthorpe on Saturday
If we beat Fleetwood and Rovers win then Scunthorpe are also well in the mix.
The important thing is for us to beat Fleetwood.

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It’s gonna be a very close run thing this season thatsfor sure

Upwards of 10 teams could get caught up in the last few games to avoid the drop if it goes down to the wire…

I agree, bottom half is so tight at the moment, if we can keep as many teams as possible in touching distance it increase our odds. Everyone from Southend down are just a couple of bad results away of falling into a relegation battle.

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Beating Oxford is an absolute must

I’m not sure there are any absolute musts at this stage. People have already been saying games are absolute musts , which we’ve then lost. Then they say the same about the next game. It means nothing. 50 points is generally the cut off but we just don’t know. All we can say at this stage is that we need all the points we can manage. Absolute musts hopefully only come in at the very end.
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Yeah of Brizzle only having five home games left they’ve got Charlton next, then Luton and Barnsley on the final day who still might need a result to get second.

Will have to see if they find some wins on the road, they did get a point at Pompey last week.

Target needs to be two more 4 point clusters like the team have just achieved v Bradford and Burton.

Accy away followed by Oxford at home and then Southend at home followed by the trip to Wycombe are musts for that imo. Given those are four games group together that would mean a run of 8 points from 4 games which is a bit of a stretch for this squad.

Still that would get the team up to 47 points so you’re then only 1 win (Fleetwood) and then a draw (Peterborough) from getting 51 which would feel safe to me.

Gives the scale of the task anyway.

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I have a sneaking feeling we’ll get 4 points over the Pompey / Sunderland matches.

This season especially is a difficult one to judge with so many teams involved at the moment and everyone taking points off each other.

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Just a few points on Sunderland. Yes they are a very good quality team at this level, but they’ve also got several weaknesses. They have little to no physical prescence, have key players eg. Cattermole, and Whatmore who can’t play 2/3 games in quick succession. They have a couple of injury problems in Maguire, and last night George Honneyman, and both marquee striker signings in Grigg and Wyke have been flops so far (although no doubt Grigg will score against us!). Also they were moaning last night about the “logistics” of the ten days ahead of our match, ie. Brizzle away last night, followed by Wycombe Saturday, and then Barnsley next midweek. Barnsley is their focus next week, I reckon we might get them on the rebound from that if we target Mcgeady and Leadbitter and get in their faces.

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