Thetownend.com

What you all reckon?

Lots of work to do but that was encouraging.

Top 10

Top 8....









...of L1 Group C. Job done, hopefully.

Still a lot of work to go yet, on and off the pith.

We'll end up around mid table if we manage to keep key players fit. If we don't it could go to the wire...but I'm confident we'll be a League 1 team next season. Seen recently how a team can propel up the table with a few wins (unfortunately I'm referring to Oxford). Plenty of points to play for.

Play all season as we did last night we will not only stay up, we will GO up.    But that just wouldn't be Swindon.

If we keep players fit and play like that every week, we're definitely staying up.

If we play like we did against Ipswich every week then we will be on the edge of playoffs.
If we play like we did against Franchise every week then we will be relegated.

I suspect we will be inconsistent and hopefully just avoid relegation.

Skybet offering 18/1 with a maximum bet of £20 for Swindon to finish in the top half... £380 return... Surely worth a punt?!

I can’t help but think of beating Charlton 4-1 on Sky in January 2011.
That proved to be a one off. I hope this isn’t the same.

This.

Although yesterday there were signs that the tide may well have turned in our favour, Travers and Thompson both made huge difference to the defence and rumour is we are signing a new centre back from Forest, replace Caddis with Freeman and thats almost an entire new back 5 including the keeper.

One swallow does not make a summer as Linda Lovelace says but the signs are encouraging for an upturn.

Yeah whilst there are some similarities about the results.

This season we are bringing in new players and shipping out deadwood. That season after that game we sold both Charlie Austin and Sean Morrison who were probably our two best players that season.

Money where my mouth is

Depends on injuries. Still have big CB issues given how injury prone Conroy, Fryers and Baudry are. They probably won't get through February and March with double gameweeks which means Odimayo and Grounds starting at CB which is weak.

Judging on yesterday's performance we'll not be in any trouble come the end of the season.

Yep and add Lyden to that mix of quality injury prone players. Keep yesterday’s together for a couple of months and we’ll be ok

I've said that when we beat Hull.
And that the Oxford result would be a turning point. I meant for us, not them.

I guess the differences is we have new players now

I've watched 3 games this season. Rovers, pox and yesterday's. I wasn't at all impressed with the first two matches. Thought we were poor and fortunate in those games. Yesterday was much better. Technically good but do look like an academy side to me where they're still finding their feet and growing with vulnerability and mistakes in them. More than enough to stay up though I think.

Agree with Arriba. The Rovers and Oxford results were good but the general team performance in both wasn't great, epsecially the latter.

Ipswich performance looked decent for adequate chunks of the game but I'm certainly not sitting back and expecting a sudden rise up the divsion (although that would be very nice).

It’s a no for me until we can start winning very two or three games or have spells of five game unbeaten runs.

While there’s plenty of time, we’re having to play catch-up and others will strengthen too.

Great result yesterday with some good-looking new additions, so there’s hope.

Thanks for the heads up, done the same also took 500-1 for us to finish in the top 6.

That's a nice little punt on reaching the Playoffs. I think it's overstretching but anything could be possible on the back of a winning streak?

Which team was it that was in the relegation zone at Christmas, went on a massive run and got promoted via the playoffs a few years back?

I'm not getting carried away in light of one (pleasing) result.

We've looked OK in a few games that we've then gone on to lose this season. If yesterday is the start of us turning that round and we are going to start taking points from games where we deserve to, and maybe chuck in a few like Rovers where we probably didn't (we *always* deserve to beat Pox), then we will be fine. But, as the saying goes, one swallow does not a summer make. Although it's a great way to start off a first date.

I seem to have Tranmere ringing a little bell in my head

May have been barnsley

Palace did it a while back. Think it was when Iain Dowie was there too  :hmmm:

I accepted relegation a while back to be honest. The signings / loan returns have given me a bit of hope but I still think we'll fall short when it comes to it due to our leaky defence.

If you'd mentioned Linda Lovelace then you would have echoed PV's points completely.

Teams that play well but lose often go down.
Teams that can 'win ugly' often stay up.

If we can put on the style and win and can also play badly and win then we will easily be in L1 next year.

That was my recollection.  The Tykes' run was helped early on by a slightly fortunate win at the County Ground IIRC.

I think our leaky defence will be very different over the next few weeks. Can realistically only see Conroy as our current defender playing, even he has only played one game there this season. I think we will be staying up

I hope so mate!

Hell yes.

Sent from my CLT-L09

We now need to hope that the season isn't curtailed in the next month and that we can pull out some more results against the top teams. We need to get out of the relegation places in case PPG becomes the means of determining the season. At this point in time we are screwed!

Not really. There’s too few games played to use ppg. I think the mooted cut off point is about 33-35 games played before they’d use ppg again.

I am hearing that the leagues 1 and 2 could be suspended very soon in line with the Scottish lower leagues, suspended until competion at a later date.

I hope not just as we looked a capable team again.

At the moment the season is due to end early May with Euro 2021 starting 11 June. Some clubs are 3/4/5/6 games behind schedule already. Shutting down even for a month will see those clubs with another 6-8 games to fit. Chuck in the FA Cup games and that is a mighty build up of games.

My worry is that once suspended it will be difficult to restart again. Could see the whole shebang being binned if a shiny, new, Covid-free season is to start in August.

If the season does get paused it should be divided in two mini leagues, a top and bottom, which concludes with two round robins of games being played at a neutral venue

Allows for some kind of final league positioning on merit and an even playing field. Teams are pretty much where they deserve to be at this point in the season - there may be some at the top of the bottom half who would quibble but realistically they’re unlikely to make a play off push now anyway.

Fuck it, adopt that system and make 13th place an additional wildcard playoff place. Get full buy in. Profit

I'd guess it's too early at present to use ppg, if they did stop now they'd probably try to complete it later. If so we could lose any momentum the Ipswich win might have brought. There were some odd scores when the Premier and Championship resumed last summer

with 4 points from 18 , I don't think loss of momentum is much to worry about. Though I know what you mean.

if there's even a hint of the leagues being suspended what do cubs do? wait until the end of January? carry on regardless?