The table from 2018/19 makes interesting reading at the 40 game mark. 1st - Luton - P40 - 86 2nd - Barnsley - P40 - 79 3rd - Portsmouth - P39 - 74 4th - Sunderland - P37 - 73 We are 1 point worse off this season - however in 2019 we only picked up another 12 points from our remaining 6 games and still got automatics. It's perfectly possible that 91 points won't be enough this season to go up - but also just goes to show how much the pressure affects form and results at this point in the season... We lost our 41st game 3-1 away at Burton, in addition to scraping a 2-1 victory over Shrewsbury at Oakwell in our 43rd game. Our other defeat was to Bristol Rovers in the final game, by which time promotion was already ensured. Who knows where it ends this season - but our max haul is 96 points and that would have seen us as Champions in 2019 over an excellent Luton side. This is far from over.
We had less points, but we had promotion in our own hands at that point. I think that briefly changed after the Burton defeat, until Portsmouth and Sunderland lost their games in hand, but we had the points, while they had the games in hand. This season we have neither. We'll need all 96 of those possible points to have any chance of top 2, because to expect 2 of the top 3 to drop points in more than two out of six games seems a bit fanciful. Looking at the final table of 18/19. Plymouth went down with 50 points, which suggests that the bottom of the league was a bit stronger than this year, and points more shared around. If Plymouth and Ipswich go up automatically, any statistical analysis would point out our defeat at Morecambe and Wednesday's defeat at FGR.
It's a shame that a referee can't see a handball on the line, 6 points this weekend would have put us right in the mix
