Just like to put it out the how big of a achievement reaching the playoffs will be if we do get there. Which I belive by this weekend could be certain. With the start we had at the beginning under struber struggling to score from open play negative football, to then val take over and turn it around on one of the smallest budgets in the league is quite remarkable. When you compare our squad to bournmouth, brentford or swansea the cost of our squad is a fraction of any of there's especially bournmouth who have a goalkeeper who cost more than our squad. For me its already a great achievement in reaching the play offs IF we were to end up reaching the top division for me it would be a greater achievement than the last time we did simply because of how much the game has changed since then. Its just a shame we haven't been inside oakwell to witness all this.
I thought making the play offs was impossible, especially after 7 or 8 games. To win them, downright riddiculous.....
If someone would have said we'd be in the Championship playoffs last July, they'd have been carted off to the loony bin. It's been a truly remarkable and fantastic season from VI and the players. Such a shame supporters can't attend
I seem to remember, last time we went up we'd started that season as favourites for relegation. Must be fate
I tried searching the site to see when playoffs were first seriously mentioned. I found this post from January which has had me laughing my tits off for the past 5 minutes.
Last year's great escape was way off the unbelievability scale. Following that up with a play off position this season is just stratospheric. I can't believe we have got to this position from where we were. If we get beaten over the two legged semi final I'll be disappointed to miss out on another trip south but I'll be philosophical about it and just be thankful for what the club has achieved. We can then reset, make a minor tweak here and there to the squad and have another go at it next season. Imagine another season like this one
Total respect of your post but we are now at the pinnacle of our recruitment 3 year cycle, please , please, please let's get over the line because if we don't we'll lose half of this squad.
The way we improved when football returned after lockdown it was clear if we kept the squad together we would probably be competitive this season. That performance against Leeds where we should have won, and how we won at Brentford on the last day of the season. The fact that we started off slowly shouldn't hide the fact we had players who could finish mid table. What changed it was that we found a manager with a plan and already had the players that could deliver his ideas. An excellent transfer window in January has made us a very competitive top six Championship side.
We will lose most of the squad as we have over achieved so much the bigger clubs will come sniffing. Most players have decent contract length so hopefully we will demand good money if that happens.
I know we often talk about the great run since Dike & Morris joined but I really think Val did a brilliant job in getting us to mid table before they joined. If you look at the 6 forwards we had pre-January with Schmidt & Thomas instead of Dike & Morris & a new to the league Frieser alongside talented but lightweight Woodrow & Chaplin & a very raw Adeboyejo I don’t think that’s a suitable group of forwards for this level. We were really missing some physicality up top & whilst Struber & Val were both right in pointing this out I can’t praise Val enough for finding a way to get points on the board without it.
