- A League of Their Own
- The Same Old Faces
A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN
While the Horses of Suffolk prepare to host the Green Army on Saturday, it appears that perhaps the race for a Premiership place is already done and dusted. This week, I have prepared some stats of my own. You can draw your own conclusions but I have added some key notations below.
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Now I know this graph may be just stating the obvious, but it is the gaps (in points) between each place I want to show. Plus, I always wanted to test out uploading graphs onto an article. The teams are listed in order of League Position along the bottom, the green line shows the number of points. The highest point is 41 for Sheffield United, Millwall are furthest to the right with 12 points, ARGYLE are in the Relegation Zone with just 3 wins, 7 draws and 6 defeats.
- The general trend suggests that Sheffield United and Reading will be no less than odds-on favoutire for automatic ascension into the top flight.
- It is unclear as to whom may make the Play-Offs, the points tallies do not seem to reflect any correlation. It is only on the knowledge of how teams have been performing that I can see the League table begin to take shape.
- There is an epic of a relegation battle is progress, almost every team other than the top two are looking over their shoulder. Any club sitting in the bottom half best prepare for what could be a real dog fight at the bottom.
THE SAME OLD FACES
Plymouth Argyle manager Tony Pulis has insisted that adding some depth to the squad will ease some his relegation fears at least. Port Vale's Sam Collins and Billy Paynter were his first targets, but attracting them to the South Coast proved a stumbling block. Collins, a young centre-half, has since made his way to Humberside to sign for Peter Taylor's Hull City. It has also emerged that Pulis tried to bring Dexter Blackstock back to Home Park on loan, but the Southampton youngster saw Derby County's offer as a more beneficial move. Lindsay Parsons, Plymouth new Assistant Manager, will be leading the attack on the transfer market to improve on the current squad. Having said, I worry for the futures of some Argyle players. Tony Pulis has made his feelings known, although he thinks the squad have a good work ethic, that extra quality in the team is lacking. However, unlike several others teams presently battling the drop, Argyle have no real injury worries. Some players have been prone to minor injuries, Connolly and Gudjonsson have been missing on a couple of occasions. However, with the exception of long-term victim Lee Hodges, Plymouth will have a fully-fit squad available for the trip to East Anglia - that's 17 first-string outfielders and two fine Goalkeepers - not to mention the budding young talent in players like Marcus Martin, Luke Summerfield and Scott Laird who I feel deserve their chance of involvement in the coming weeks.