The rest of the top 4 playing each other and we have 3 games out of 4 at home. Leeds in particulkar have a very tricky next few games to test their mettle.

Leeds next 4 fixtures:

Sunderland (Home)
Sheff Utd (Away)
West Brom (Home)
Pompey (Away)

Sheff Utd

Luton (Away)
Leeds (Home)
QPR (Away)
PNE (Home)

Burnley

PNE (Away)
Sheff Wed (Home)
Luton (Home)
West Brom (Home)

Sunderland

Leeds (Away)
Hull (Home)
Sheff Wed (Away)
Cardiff (Home)

I honestly think we will end up as champions and it will be the sweetest championship win for me for the following reasons

1 - it makes the race more exciting
2 - Sheffield United and Leeds are playing at their maximum where as we have bags of room for improvement and we are showing that
3 - It will annoy our title rivals more
4 - we will be in better stead for the PL season

If Leeds come through that run unbeaten, they're as good as up.

You can bet there's 2 clubs above us right now who will be wishing we'd just f*ck off.

Think all the top four will be thinking that about the other teams around them.

Leeds (with the exception of against us) are flying right now. They are killing games in the first 20 minutes, scoring for fun and not really conceding. I thought they were the better side against us just about but the thing that surprised me was how good a couple of their defenders were - the centre back and right back.

Think Leeds will pull away now.
For the second automatic spot I think it’s probably going to go down to the last couple of weeks between the 3 of us. All 3 teams have shown a lot of resilience and consistency. I thought Sunderland would drop away but they seem to have something going amongst their team and manager and have dangerous forwards too. The thing that could trip them up is depth of their squad if they pick up injuries to big players - not surprising really given they are the ones who have by far spent the least….which makes their points tally this season all the more impressive

I have trepidation about the Preston game.... for some reason.

Taffy on the wing wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 13, 2025 4:16 pm

I have trepidation about the Preston game.... for some reason.

I'm more confident we can score 2-3 early doors.

This is the key part of the season. We need to be in the top 2 following those 4 games, if not then Sheff Utd at home probably becomes an absolute must win along with some tricky looking fixtures in Coventry and Watford.

Sunderland beating Leeds would open things up nicely

Match Sheff Utd results and beat them at home and we're up!

We need a 5/6 game winning run at this point to really push Leeds I think. If we manage that sort of run I am confident we will get ahead of Sheffield United at least.

I think we need to stop worrying about Leeds and just target getting above Blades. We've got them to play at home also.

Doubt we’ll catch Leeds with the form they’re in, although the next two games are the crucial ones so that’s premature until we see how they pan out. Win them both and it’s as good as done.

Key is chipping away at Sheffield United’s lead and getting ahead of them. Thought Boro might cause an upset last night which is annoying.

One step at a time. Just pulled in Sheffield first. The go for Leeds afterwards.

There are 42 points to play for and we are 5 points behind Leeds. It’s far too early to be waving the white flag on them

gandhisflipflop wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 13, 2025 6:51 pm

There are 42 points to play for and we are 5 points behind Leeds. It’s far too early to be waving the white flag on them

I think it’s more their form. They’ve only lost three and are giving teams comprehensive beatings, plus are 17 ahead in GD or something mad - so the lead is effectively 6 points. I expect it’ll take us to have a 100% win record between now and the end of the season to topple them.

Leeds have shown in the past that they are wont to bottle it when it starts getting tighter at the tail end of the season, and our record in this division has us being utterly relentless for a decade.
I think we will finish above at least one of Leeds and Sheffield Utd, and I'd not be surprised to finish above both of them.

gandhisflipflop wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 13, 2025 6:51 pm

There are 42 points to play for and we are 5 points behind Leeds. It’s far too early to be waving the white flag on them

Leeds have only dropped 27 points this season.

Average that out over the rest of the season they will only drop another 11 points.

Not a lot of wiggle room left for us to catch them up, you would effectively be looking at us winning 12 out of the next 14 games

gandhisflipflop wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 13, 2025 3:45 pm

I honestly think we will end up as champions and it will be the sweetest championship win for me for the following reasons

1 - it makes the race more exciting
2 - Sheffield United and Leeds are playing at their maximum where as we have bags of room for improvement and we are showing that
3 - It will annoy our title rivals more
4 - we will be in better stead for the PL season

5 - It will seriously pi$$ off the Dollopers.

The beauty of them playing each other is they can't all win!

Part of me wants Leeds to turn over Utd and Mackems to give us opportunity to gain on 2nd spot

But then if both games were draws and we win our next two then we'd be within a point of Leeds and Sheffield (if they won their other)

Far better for Leeds to lose.

Better chance when four teams are going for two spots, rather than three teams fighting over one spot.

Think this season will see a record high points total for the team finishing 4th.

rexe78202 wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 13, 2025 4:35 pm

I'm more confident we can score 2-3 early doors.

Let's hope you're right.

In reality we need Leeds to pick up points from our rivals for the top 2 places

Why do some think Leeds are the best team at the moment?

They aren't. If it wasn't for the two point deduction Sheffield United would have exactly the same number of points as them.

That's why it's better for us that everyone takes points off each other.

That may change as each weekend goes by but currently people need to realise that Sheff United are performing just as well as Leeds are. Is just that they've been docked two points.

I think perhaps sometimes peoples' inherent (and purely natural) dislike of Leeds affects their judgment.

Spijed wrote: ↑

Fri Feb 14, 2025 7:43 am

Why do some think Leeds are the best team at the moment?

They aren't. If it wasn't for the two point deduction Sheffield United would have exactly the same number of points as them.

That's why it's better for us that everyone takes points off each other.

That may change as each weekend goes by but currently people need to realise that Sheff United are performing just as well as Leeds are. Is just that they've been docked two points.

Good point, I’d forgotten about the deductions, I was thinking that if DL wins all the next three games it makes second place more achievable.
But we can only worry about ourselves and hope we do enough.

Taffy on the wing wrote: ↑

Fri Feb 14, 2025 3:39 am

Let's hope you're right.

If we don't. We can score 2-3 goals middle doors.

THEWELLERNUT70 wrote: ↑

Fri Feb 14, 2025 7:05 am

In reality we need Leeds to pick up points from our rivals for the top 2 places

We're good enough to win this division.

We've been good enough to win most games this Season so I hope the real bore draws won't come back to bite our ar*e.

There's no more than a couple of dogsh1te ref decisions between the top 3.
We can rinse Sheff U on the turf in a few weeks...added to which the other contenders cant all win their upcoming round robin.

Parker's got this.

dougcollins wrote: ↑

Fri Feb 14, 2025 7:40 pm

I think perhaps sometimes peoples' inherent (and purely natural) dislike of Leeds affects their judgment.

This is me

Growing up in border country in the 1970s coupled with Hunter on Casper usual logic doesn't apply

EarbyClaret wrote: ↑

Fri Feb 14, 2025 9:45 pm

This is me

Growing up in border country in the 1970s coupled with Hunter on Casper usual logic doesn't apply

100%

fatboy47 wrote: ↑

Fri Feb 14, 2025 9:35 pm

There's no more than a couple of dogsh1te ref decisions between the top 3.
We can rinse Sheff U on the turf in a few weeks...added to which the other contenders cant all win their upcoming round robin.

Parker's got this.

Agreed. If this team goes for it, we can win every game.

But we have to go for it. Don't sit back. Go for it.

Ultimately, the other clubs mean nothing if we don't win games. We've enough draws for the season. We can even lose for me, but 3 points now have even more impact (win x2, lose x1 is better than win x1 and draw x2)!

Tough game today Preston on a roll

Sadly, I am 90% sure we’re not good enough to get automatic this year, as there are two teams better than us. Think we lost the season in the transfer window as we didn’t sign (or couldn’t) a goal scorer. Hopefully we’ll get through in the playoffs.

No way we go up automatically. Not good enough.