Can City Make a Late Play Off Push
Lincoln City can make a later playoff push – that’s according to site reader Andy Chapman.
Earlier in the week, Michael Skubala said: “We need to be looking up because why can’t we go on a run? We will try to get some wins and then see where we are at the end of February as that is when things will become clearer,” writes Andy.
With that in mind, I have been looking up and looking back at previous seasons to try and figure out what we need to do to make the playoffs this season! (I would like to preface this whole article by saying if you offered my 8th, 9th or 10th, I would snap your hand off right now!)
ooking at all of this, you can see that in eight out of those 10 seasons, 75 points would have got you into the playoffs, so this is the target number I will use as I start to look forward. My only slight issue is that the two seasons that 75 points would not have got you into the playoffs have been the last two seasons, but let’s just ignore that for now!
Looking up
Currently we sit in 10th place on 45 points with 13 games remaining. Over those 13 games, we would get to 58 points if we took 1 point per game, 64 points if we took 1.5 points on average per game, 71 points if we took two points per game, and the magic number for my scenario is 2.3 points average as that gets us to 75 points!
Looking forwards
Game 1: Saturday 24th Feb – Port Vale (A) – Port Vale are scrapping down at the bottom of the table at the moment and even though they have a new manager, I can’t see their form improving when we head over. I think this will be our first win of the run in. My prediction is a 2 – 0 win.
Game 2: Tuesday 27th Feb – Shrewsbury (H) – Shrewsbury are another team down towards the bottom of the table. As an Imp whose closest away game in Shrewsbury, I can tell you that we never seem to play well against them away so luckily this game is at the LNER. I think our unbeaten run will continue. My prediction is a 1 – 0 win.
Game 3: Saturday 2nd Mar – Stevenage (H) – This is the first game where I think our unbeaten run is under a little threat. Steve Evans knows what he’s doing, and while they are on a bit of an indifferent run at the moment, I think this game will cause us problems. My prediction is a 2 -1 loss.
Game 4: Saturday 9th Mar – Barnsley (A) – Another tricky game against a team who are battling for automatic promotion. We will put up a good fight, but I think this will be another tough game. My prediction is a 2 – 0 loss.
Game 5: Tuesday 12th Mar – Cambridge (H) – Cambridge are going to finish the season midtable and we should be winning this game so I think this will be a nice game to stop the run of two losses. My prediction is a 2 – 1 win. (Macauley Bonne will 100% score for Cambridge!)
