Facing Sutton on their patch feels like the beginning of the sharp end of the season.
We’ve got ourselves fairly securely into the play-off spots, but Sutton are really well-placed: in terms of points per game, they’re the top team in the division.
Games in March are usually highly significant, but this season everything’s different. There’s a lot of football still to be fitted in, and it’s certainly too soon to be panicking about dropped points.
After all, if you look back at the last time we got promoted, you can see how a defeat in the run-in doesn’t necessary scupper your chances. 18 years ago to the week we suffered a 1-0 loss at Exeter as a result of a very poor performance, falling to 10th place in the table. Denis Smith went crazy at his team, and they responded: we didn’t lose again all season and went up!
However, if we can keep driving on from this point, we’ll be well-placed for the run-in, and avoiding defeat at Sutton would be a huge step forwards in that process.
We’ve lost 1 in 8 and after the Sutton match are a couple of games against sides in the relegation zone. Continually accumulating points by avoiding defeat keeps you up there, and if we can hit form over the next week we can develop some real momentum.
Admittedly, we’ve played more games than a lot of the sides around us: Sutton have played three fewer. However, that really doesn’t bother me. I’d much rather we had the points in the bag than games in hand: those matches have to be won, which becomes challenging when teams are in danger of running out of vacant midweek slots.
Sutton, for example, only reached the halfway point of their season four days ago. It took them 21 and a half weeks. They’ve got 14 weeks to fit the second half of the season in. Already, they only have four vacant midweek slots if you don’t count the first week of Easter, when to fit a game in they’d have to play Saturday-Tuesday-Friday. Any outbreaks of COVID or bad weather could wreak havoc with their schedule.
Notts County are in an even worse position. They’ve played the same number of games as Sutton, but don’t have a free midweek until mid-May. Their schedule is on a knife edge.
That’s because they’re still in the FA Trophy. Their game at Wealdstone on March 27th won’t take place because it’ll clash with their semi-final, and they won’t be able to rearrange it for seven weeks because that’s the next available midweek for them.
Personally, I hope they decide to play it three days later and take the hit of a Saturday-Tuesday-Friday week, because we’re the side they’ll be playing on Good Friday!
If they win the semi-final, that means they’ll only have one free midweek. Quite apart from the danger of possible postponements, County are facing an incredibly grueling schedule. If they can get through it and go up at the end of the season, all you could do is applaud them because they’d have earned it.
Matters are in our hands. Now, more than ever, we need to unite behind this team: if they could hand our new owners an unexpectedly early promotion, we’d be in an amazing position!
Leave a Reply