Well, at least someone is feeling confident about the run-in.
Compare that to Alan McInally at Sky Sports who doesn’t have us finishing in the top six this season despite having a pretty sizeable gap when it comes to the team in seventh, both in terms of points and goal differential.
Speaking to Nottingham Live, about the restart of the season, club captain Michael Dawson, fresh off signing a new deal with the club, said that it will be important for the club to come out of the blocks firing if they are to have any chance of keeping the gap the way it is:
“I think the first three games will define that. At the start of the season, you go in and try to hit the ground running. I think our first three games are really important, to see where it takes us. We win three and they (West Brom and Leeds) lose some, then the gap is lowered.”
So he seems to think the idea of automatic promotion isn’t totally off the table either.
Do we still have a realistic shot at the top two?
Yes
No
Which given that we’re currently ten points away from the team in second-placed right now is going to be a very tall order. If we had to play them in the run-in then that might sway thinks slightly in our favour, effectively giving us a few ‘six-pointers’ in which to catch them up.
We play a lot of teams that are around us in the table, but they’ll only really take importance for the playoff race rather than the automatic spots, at least on our end.
But a gap like that just seems far too big when we don’t have all that much control over it. Whatever the opposite of ‘in our own hands’ is, that’s pretty much where we are as we go into the restart of the season.
What about you? Do you think that the automatic spots are still within reach for us? Or do you think it’s playoffs or bust in a sense?
