At the end of last season the top 5 sides in the Conference had each managed over 80 points, had a goal difference of +25 or more, and won 22+ games, The two that went up had 95 points and 85 points, and Kidderminster missed out with 93, but that's an argument for elsewhere. (Three Up, Three Down please!)
At the time of writing, 10 sides have more than half the required 80 points total, but everyone is now over the halfway point, some teams by as many as six games (Alfreton). For example, the Mariners had 43 points after 23 games this year, prior to the Lincoln draw at Blundell Park. This time last year, Town had 48 points from 26 games, and only 6 sides had reached the 40 point mark. But I'm not going to do a comparison for all 10! Looking at last year's stats is a bit nostalgic and only indicates what MAY be needed. It is interesting to note how currently neither Wrexham nor Forest Green are close to last year's form (Wrexham are on 35 from 26, Forest Green 34 points from 25; last year at this point FGR 45from 26, and Wrexham 50 from 27).
So the next logical thing is to look at who do we play next? There's a challenging run; Gateshead, Wrexham and Cambridge in the next 3. Everyone plays each other, roughly, as we are halfway-ish. And last year we fell away when Nathan Pond and Scott Neilson left, so let's hope with no-one leaving except a host of teens on work experience to Gainsborough, Boston and Scarborough, and Jamal Fyfield and possibly a striker coming in, hopefully the squad is improving more than at this time 12 months ago....
And do you know what; I write this in the midst of the Forest Green Rovers Floodlight Fiasco. 'We have a fault with stanchion #3.... we are trying to allow stanchion#3 to stop stopping stanchion#4 from working.' says the FGR tannoy. That's nice. Er, what?
Do you know what, this disruption to the game has left me in such a bad mood, I'm not going to write any more! If teams have rubbish facilities, fine, but if they cause fixture backlogs, cost and inconvenience, they should be discplined. Grrrr.
Kudos to Radio Humberside for their attempted song-related humour. Lots more will transpire about events, surely..... So this part of the blog will be out of date as soon as published.
Can we get enough points? Hopefully, if away teams can get our games played!
http://www.statto.com/football/stats/england/conference-premier/2012-2013