Clough

[magpie_mania]

Statistically, it is very high compared to any other division we've been in. Attendances and resources should dictate that we're more likely than not to finish in the top 7, but there's only 1 automatic spot, which both last season and this we haven't been able to capture at any point in time, never mind when it most matters.

Once we're in the play offs..... once again, size of the club should give us a better chance in the play offs than 1 in 6, it's not the lottery that some insist it is, but over just 2 games there's more chance of an upset (for example big clubs are more likely to get knocked out of cup competitions in a single tie than over two legs and significantly more likely than in a round robin group stage) Success in play offs is far from certain, as we found to our cost last season. If it's a 1 in 3 chance of promotion, that's still a 66% chance of failure. 50/50 would assume you're 100% guaranteed to reach the final, which isn't reasonable (and that's assuming you finish top 3 to avoid the QFs).

I'm quite satisfied that it's an objective fact that there's a very high probability that we will fail in the play offs again, at least one more time before we go up.

Obviously it is quite a possibility that we would fail, but I think it wrong to say a very high probability. Have you taken into account how teams do if they failed the season previously? And of course a season like this, number of games called off, players ill is unprecedented, even compared to last season when the great majority of the season had been played. If we are able to continue, some teams may need to be playing 3 games a week to catch up, some might be unable to complete the season. Look at Dover, they have 8 games in 1 case to catch up and 7 on several teams. We haven't even hit the worse time for frozen pitches etc.

To me, 17 games postponed yesterday in the National Leagues (out of 30) and the general situation with Covid says that things are only going to get worse.