In an extreme type of situation, maybe. For example 97/98, when our form collapsed completely after a very strong start.
However, those of us with basic common sense could identify that a team which was playing decent stuff and hadn't lost 3 consecutive league games all season was never in a million years going to suddenly lose about 8 on the spin.
What Oxford (who, like us, finished 8th) have done is irrelevant. We never see them play and aren't placed to comment on factors like the impact of Wilder leaving, how genuine their apparently strong start was, etc.
You don't need to be losing strings of games to be in a slump...lose a couple, draw a couple, win 1, lose another couple, draw a couple, win 1, lose one. Gives you 10 points from 10 games....which is exactly what we had going into the Shitty game, not necessarily in that order. At that stage we had 47, keep that form and a decent 57 obtained...enough to stay up, but you can go from this league with 52, so a bit close for comfort.
We entered the final phase of 10 games, in poor form away from home, especially losing to bottom 4 sides, something we maintained, Tranmere weren't actually bottom 4 when we went there. The away form ended up easily that of a bottom 4 sides.
We had a run of tough looking home fixtures against top 4 sides....certainly no room for complacency or taking anything for granted. Football is about fine margins....the Oxford example is relevant insofar as it demonstrates how instability can affect things, in ways perhaps not anticipated.
Our form tailed when we lost the reasonably potent front 3 of Ajose, N'Guessan and Ranger , for a variety of reasons...who can say how the instabilty now in the club, would have affected matters, if Jed and his Albanians had reared their ugly heads in February rather than April.
As I've said previously happily the management recognised the situation and did something about it, hopefully that will continue.....but fuck knows what will happen if Jed gets his foot in the door again.
