Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Thursday 18 April 2013

18 April 2013

Mardy Diary writes: There's not much happening in the world of Town today. Andrew Boyes has been in touch to pass on news that Bill Shankly is featured on the latest set of Royal Mail stamps entitled 'Great Britons' - but this is already well covered by the excellent Too Good To Go Down and the Tellywag. So I shan't dwell on it.

What everyone has been talking about of late is Town's prospects in the up-coming play-offs, especially in regards to the results the top five have achieved against each other, and how Town's aren't looking too bad. Ah, I hear you say - but Town had no problem defeating Cheltenham in the League in the 2005-06 season, but look how the final turned out?

It's a fair point, and given the nature of the play-offs it's difficult to really guess how it may turn out. We don't even know who'll play who yet with Town and Wrexham battling for 4th and 5th, and Wrexham and Kiddie fighting for the top spot. The whole thing looks like hanging on the Mansfield v Wrexham match - how exciting.

However, it made me wonder what the form of the top teams was like in the 2005-06 season - so I had a look:

...and interestingly it seems, given their form against play-off rivals, that promotion for Cheltenham wasn't as unjust as it may first have seemed. Cheltenham squeezed past Wycombe in the semi-final, before scraping a narrow win against Town in the final. So then I thought - well, what about 1998?

Again, the team that finished narrowly second (Town) went on to win the final - and again not an unjust result given Town's form against those around them. So what about the current season? Well, the play-off teams aren't determined yet so first I had a look as it currently stands with Kidderminster as the final team:

With Town still to play Newport this isn't the final tally but the positions are pretty much guaranteed, with only the possibility of Newport climbing a place if they beat Town and Wrexham lose. Kidderminster are frighteningly in front of everyone here, and if this table shows anything it shows that the Football Conference should do the honourable thing and just let Kiddie have the automatic promotion spot giving the rest of us at least a fighting chance of promotion. Either way, Town occupy that second spot which has always led to promotion as my extensive analysis above shows.

It's very different if you take Kiddie out and replace them with Mansfield though:

Now this table could change considerably over the weekend. Of course, if Mansfield win (or Kiddie don't) then they won't even be in this table. So assuming Wrexham beat Mansfield then a draw for Town, or a lower-scoring win than Wrexham will see Town take the coveted second place (or the 'promotion spot' as I like to call it). Basically, Wrexham could really screw this whole gameplan up for us.

Ideally then, we need Wrexham to beat Mansfield and Kiddie to win (sorry Stockport fans, it's not personal!). This will then mean we play either Newport of Mansfield in the semi-final - dependent on if we beat Newport heavily or not. If Wrexham lose/draw, then we really need a draw/win to avoid Kiddie if at all possible.

Or another way to look at this whole sorry, statistical shambles is to say that ideally we need to win both play-off semi-finals and the final. This will 100% ensure our promotion back to the Football League. Easy!