Automatic promotion is still within our reach
12:38pm Thursday 6th March 2008
LAST week was a bit of a disaster in tems of our promotion aspirations.
Defeats at Dagenham and at home to Stockport were not what we expected.
At Dagenham, we started very efficiently, passed the ball well and got ourselves into good positions. For 20 minutes, we looked as though we had picked up from where we had left off in the victory at Shrewsbury.
But Dagenham started to get a foothold in the game and, for the remainder of that match, I just felt that they worked harder and that horrible phrase they wanted it more than we did' springs to mind.
They showed a lot of endeavour, commitment and aggression and we did not cope with it.
But, to be fair, they have now won five on the run which is, by any standards, a good sequence and indicates that they are a decent outfit.
We rarely got going against Stockport on Saturday although Ben Smith's chance in the middle of the first half was the best opportunity of the game.
Had we taken that chance then things might have been different.
Stockport did play with a slightly different system to the one we expected and it caused us problems. We tried to change our formation a little to counter it during the course of the game but rarely looked convincing.
In analysing what went wrong in the last two, we have to take account that it was the first opportunities that we have had of going top of the table.
At Dagenham, no-one could have stopped us and had results gone right against Stockport we could have been the leaders on Saturday evening.
Whether that extra pressure and expectation plays a part, I'm not sure. It could also be that, after a run of five victories, we just expected to win.
We crossed the white line and never put the right sort of application in. So, if that was the case, then a little bit of complacency crept in.
Whatever our shortcomings over the last couple of matches, we still find ourselves in a great position.
Over the season, as the points have been accumulated, I have ticked off in my diary our requirements.
Fifty four to avoid relegation, 63 to finish in the top half of the table. We have already hit those two targets and now it is 74 to make sure we are in the play-offs.
So the minimum we require now is 10 more points to be sure of extending our season. But I am still hopeful that we can reach our target of 22 more points and gain automatic promotion.