Remaining fixtures

[Worthy4England]

Fixtures predictor: had another go with this one

https://thefishy.co.uk/calculator0.php?Competition=4

And by jingo it's exciting

I have us 5th in mid-April, with a Worthy-infuriating two dropped points at Salford, but then others do the same: Newport-Cambridge is a draw, then Bradford-Tranmere and suddenly we're third. Newport win their game in hand to go back above us on goal difference on April 27, but then in the second-last game they're held to a draw by title-winners Cheltenham and we win our last two to pop champagne corks.

WELL IT MIGHT HAPPEN

Glad I did that. Finished 8th on GD to Cambridge. 74 points...

[Worthy4England]

Mind when I just picked Bolton's games and left it to calculate the rest, we were 5th (and if I let it do it's own thing we finish 3rd)...suspect I'm over picking how good our competitors are and under estimating our results...

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

Joe Ledley has signed for Newport. That’s two players I know at clubs other than Tranmeres BWFC reject army.

Good player. Hope he's past it. He's been hopping about since summer 2017 – signed for Derby as a freebie in Sep 2017, played 26 in 2017/18 but only 4 in the first half of the following season and was released in Jan 2019. Unemployed till Dec 2019 when Charlton took a chance, but only played once and by February he was in Australia with Newcastle Jets, playing just six times. So that's 11 appearances in the last 2.5 seasons - he's going to be way off the pace. Hopefully.

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

Mind when I just picked Bolton's games and left it to calculate the rest, we were 5th (and if I let it do it's own thing we finish 3rd)...suspect I'm over picking how good our competitors are and under estimating our results...

I think I had us drawing with the teams around us (and Salford) but winning the rest. Doesn't seem outrageous – and if we play as well against other rivals as we did against Cambridge, we should be laughing.

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

Another telling day in the promotion neighborbood. Of the top 12, six teams lost and five won: those five are now all part of the top 6. That's how tables tend to go.

In the match o't'day CAMBRIDGE were deserved winners against FOREST GREEN - the hosts had a penalty saved before scoring the winner through old man Hoolahan.

The day's big losers were NEWPORT, whose lunchtime home loss to Orient (thanks to BW old boy Connor Wilkinson) was a second defeat in five days and cost them two places with BOLTON and MORECAMBE beating Walsall and Harrogate respectively while TRANMERE also nudged past EXETER, denting their catch-up hopes.

Also losing ground were SALFORD, solidly beaten 2-0 at leaders CHELTENHAM despite 64% possession (but no shots on target), CRAWLEY (beaten 3-2 by a resurgent Barrow) and CARLISLE (beaten 3-1 at Stevenage to slip nine points behind the dots).
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And so to Tuesday, when four teams play a game-in-hand card.
• FOREST GREEN go to Mansfield (who then travel to Tranmere on Saturday and have only won 2 in 12).
• TRANMERE go to Colchester, who've only won 1 in 20.
• EXETER schlep to Oldham, who've won 1 in 10. Another long trip north though, after Tranmere today.
• CARLISLE, who have to start winning games in hand, host Orient.

Favourable results are unlikely but next weekend looks fascinating, with 8 of the top 11 playing each other – Morecambe v Cheltenham, Cambridge v Carlisle, FGR v Bolton, Exeter v Salford – plus Tranmere v Mansfield, Newport v Scunny and Crawley v Vale. It's already a big game for Wanderers, but that fixture list means it could be a key day in the hunt for automatic promotion.

[Mar]

And so to Tuesday, when four teams play a game-in-hand card.
• FOREST GREEN go to Mansfield (who then travel to Tranmere on Saturday and have only won 2 in 12).
• TRANMERE go to Colchester, who've only won 1 in 20.
• EXETER schlep to Oldham, who've won 1 in 10. Another long trip north though, after Tranmere today.
• CARLISLE, who have to start winning games in hand, host Orient.

Favourable results are unlikely but next weekend looks fascinating, with 8 of the top 11 playing each other – Morecambe v Cheltenham, Cambridge v Carlisle, FGR v Bolton, Exeter v Salford – plus Tranmere v Mansfield, Newport v Scunny and Crawley v Vale. It's already a big game for Wanderers, but that fixture list means it could be a key day in the hunt for automatic promotion.

That's quite interesting regarding next weeks fixtures, add a little extra spice to the proceedings.

Worst case scenario then would leave us 4 points off the automatics:

65 Cheltenham
64 Cambridge
64 Forest Green Rovers
64 Tranmere
60 Bolton
59 Morecambe
59 Exeter
57 Carlisle
57 Newport
54 Salford
54 Bradford

Still quite the uphill battle to go. Glad to see the chasing pack dropping points today helping us to get that little bit closer to securing the play offs.

One more win and we're safe from relegation!

[BWFC_Insane]

For me it’s best to look at points targets rather than twists and turns each week.

Play offs I reckon needs 70 minimum and probably 72/3. So 4 wins gives you a real chance.

Automatics I’d add 10 on so 80 but more likely 82/3.
7 wins maybe gives you a great chance.

I don’t think 7 wins is impossible or even improbable but doesn’t take much to make it pretty hard. Win next week and got to believe autos are really on.

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

For me it’s best to look at points targets rather than twists and turns each week.

Play offs I reckon needs 70 minimum and probably 72/3. So 4 wins gives you a real chance.

Automatics I’d add 10 on so 80 but more likely 82/3.
7 wins maybe gives you a great chance.

I don’t think 7 wins is impossible or even improbable but doesn’t take much to make it pretty hard. Win next week and got to believe autos are really on.

Whichever way you look at it, it changes every week. – points targets rise and fall with results.

Bloke this week did a statistical analysis reported in the BN which reckoned 74pts for 7th (higher than your number above) and 79pts for 3rd (lower), then suggested we might need 75 and 81 respectively: "to have a 95 per cent probability of finishing in the play-offs would require 18 points in the final 11 games, and for a 95 per cent probability of finishing in an automatic promotion spot they would require a further 30 points."

https://www.theboltonnews.co.uk/sport/1 ... play-offs/

And then that presumably all changed this weekend - when the automatic bar got raised (most of the top teams won), but the playoff bar arguably fell (all the chasing pack lost). Basically we're all reading the tealeaves, assessing the form, shooting the shit and passing the time till the next game.

You're very right, though, that winning our game this weekend would be a huge, huge step towards being in the automatic shake-up; coupled with some big games elsewhere (eg if Morecambe beat Cheltenham, we'd only be two points behind the current leaders) it could be a huge afternoon – but certainly not decisive. This story's going to run and run.

[Worthy4England]

"to have a 95 per cent probability of finishing in the play-offs would require 18 points in the final 11 games, and for a 95 per cent probability of finishing in an automatic promotion spot they would require a further 30 points"

Poorly worded. I read this a couple of times and said 18 points plus "a further 30" = 48 (from 11 games), but I'm now thinking they're not additive. Either way he's saying we need to win 10 out of 11, think I preferred your predict the results approach.

[Mar]

For me it’s best to look at points targets rather than twists and turns each week.

Play offs I reckon needs 70 minimum and probably 72/3. So 4 wins gives you a real chance.

Automatics I’d add 10 on so 80 but more likely 82/3.
7 wins maybe gives you a great chance.

I don’t think 7 wins is impossible or even improbable but doesn’t take much to make it pretty hard. Win next week and got to believe autos are really on.

I think that would also depend on who we are beating in that run. Should we beat those in and around us I would suspect that the minimum number of points would drop substantially.

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

For me it’s best to look at points targets rather than twists and turns each week.

Play offs I reckon needs 70 minimum and probably 72/3. So 4 wins gives you a real chance.

Automatics I’d add 10 on so 80 but more likely 82/3.
7 wins maybe gives you a great chance.

I don’t think 7 wins is impossible or even improbable but doesn’t take much to make it pretty hard. Win next week and got to believe autos are really on.

I think that would also depend on who we are beating in that run. Should we beat those in and around us I would suspect that the minimum number of points would drop substantially.

Aye - wins against FGR, Newport and Morecambe would help harpoon their hopes

[knobpolisher]

Another factor, as if we don't have enough factorials in our life, is our goal difference. A thumping 4 - 0 or 5 - 0 by us would be worth an extra point almost.
We need not just to catch the likes of tranmere and fgr we need to pass their points tally, a better goal diff would ease things slightly.

[KeyserSoze]

A week after a cup final win Salford have sacked Wellens, I see.

[BWFC_Insane]

I don't feel like I did on previous run ins - for example the closest to this sort of scenario being the run in during Dougie's first season where we went from worrying about relegation to a minute from the play offs. Fairly similar to this one. The difference now is I think with the squad we've got we ARE good enough to do this under our own steam and almost SHOULD do this. Unlike then when it felt like we needed helping hands (at least to me) and a fair wind. The squad now I think can win any game in this league. The squad then although people liked to pretend it was strong, patently wasn't.

So I feel others need the helping hands and we just need to avoid a run of injury and bad luck - rather than necessarily needing everything to go in our favour. Its a strange place to be in for a Bolton fan as usually we feel we're the underdogs. Even in league one promotion season whilst we had a decent enough side we had issues going on that heavily restricted us especially in the second half of the season and it felt like we had to cling on to get over the line rather than we were more than good enough to do so.

Plenty of more than good enough squads and teams end up short though so its nothing to do with complacency or anything like that - it just feels like we're equipped to be able to win every game - and unlike most scenarios I'm not thumbing the fixture list and placing games as assumed defeats and trying to count where our points come from.

[officer_dibble]

A week after a cup final win Salford have sacked Wellens, I see.

Post match Saturday Wellens said he watched the warm up for the first time (as he’s got other important things on when that’s happening) and it was a “load of rubbish”. Warner Joyce got the blame which I am guessing wound the ‘class of 92’ up enough. Sounds like a new man is in tomorrow as a last throw of the dice for this season. Bet Wellens is glad he dropped down a division now.

[LeverEnd]

A week after a cup final win Salford have sacked Wellens, I see.

Did you see the interview he gave? Looked like he wanted out. Embarrassed for him.

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

Seems like a long time since I was wondering if Welles’s might be a good next manager for us.

[LeverEnd]

Seems like a long time since I was wondering if Welles’s might be a good next manager for us.

[TANGODANCER]

Not a joke but a reality, so no disrespect, but Forest Green Rovers sounds like a team Bolton might have drawn as a giant-killer side in the F.A.Cup back when when the likes of Yeovil were emerging.

[Branagan]

I've put a tenner on us to win outright at 10/1. DSB can you rationalise that one with stats for me?