No proper footie til Friday, so for the sake of summat to do thought I'd dive into some of our longest runs against other teams.

Starting with the good stuff - our longest winning runs including both home and away, all competitions.

Our record is 8 wins on the bounce. We've done that against 3 different teams. There's 2 further teams we've won 7 on the bounce, and a further 3 we've won 6 consecutive games.

So without cheating, can anyone guess the 8 teams we've had our best winning runs against. Unlimited imaginary prizes available for best guesses.

41 minutes ago, Arrested development said:

Nob Enders ? Can't remember a win against them recently 

We've played them 6 times since we did the treble over them in 2000/01. Drawn 3, lost 3.

Leeds?

Options are getting thin now.

Sheffield Wed ?

2 hours ago, desperado said:

Leeds?

correct. Not beat them in 10 games since the 5-1 in 2014. Lost the last seven. Wish I'd picked a different run, bit depressing this one.

Full list

Chelsea - 19 games

Middlesbrough - 11

Leeds - 10

Man U - 9

Wigan - 8

Sheff Wed - 7

Brentford - 7

For best endings (as in winning/not losing runs) to the season, the 21/22 must be up there

Edited March 31, 20242 yr by desperado

On 29/03/2024 at 10:15, Dr. Feelgood said:

Rotherham.

Have we EVER beaten those fckrs ?

Yes, but we haven't beaten them away from home in 18 attempts

1 hour ago, desperado said:

For best endings (as in winning/not losing runs) to the season, the 21/22 must be up there

not exactly what you mentioned, but already had this to hand. First half v second half of the season for past 4 years.

2020/21	P	W	D	L	Pts	ppg
first half	23	7	7	9	28	1.22
second half	23	16	3	4	51	2.22
Total	46	23	10	13	79	1.72
2021/22	P	W	D	L	Pts	ppg
first half	23	7	5	11	26	1.13
second half	23	14	5	4	47	2.04
Total	46	21	10	15	73	1.59
2022/23	P	W	D	L	Pts	ppg
first half	23	10	7	6	37	1.61
second half	23	13	5	5	44	1.91
Total	46	23	12	11	81	1.76
2023/24	P	W	D	L	Pts	ppg
first half	23	15	3	5	48	2.09
second half	18	7	7	4	28	1.56
Total	41	22	10	9	76	1.85

 

 

Seems as good a place as any to put it, covering 10 game runs this season.

Makes a good point that this last 10 game poor run has coincided with Baxter and Charles being injured.

I realise some folk will say but others have had injuries and that Charles was already going off form and @Johnnyrotten will say Charles won’t make a difference against Portsmouth & Peterborough even if he is fit 🤣.

But for me it’s pretty clear we’ve missed one of the best keepers and best goal scorers in L1. 

If we can get them back fit and injury-free I think it would make a massive difference.

25 minutes ago, desperado said:

Seems as good a place as any to put it, covering 10 game runs this season.

Makes a good point that this last 10 game poor run has coincided with Baxter and Charles being injured.

I realise some folk will say but others have had injuries and that Charles was already going off form and @Johnnyrotten will say Charles won’t make a difference against Portsmouth & Peterborough even if he is fit 🤣.

But for me it’s pretty clear we’ve missed one of the best keepers and best goal scorers in L1. 

If we can get them back fit and injury-free I think it would make a massive difference.

Even if Charles is fit against Pompey and Posh I expect he won't score from open play 😀 I still hope he's fit though, coz we need as many potential scorers as possible for the run in / play offs.  And I'd be chuffed to bits to see him score the winner in the 96th minute at Posh to secure promotion.

We've missed those 2, no doubt.  But there's a flaw in those "10 game" stats.  The last block is 3 homes and 7 aways! 

And the aways include 3 bogey grounds plus another top 6 challenger.  How many points do folk realistically think we would have got from those 10 at any time, given our general inconsistency?  Maybe we should have beaten Charlton and Exeter, but no more than we should have beaten Reading, Carlisle, Burton etc when we were "on form".

I still say our recent form is typical of the season, I don't know when we expected the results to be better against the same calibre opposition.  Undefeated at home since mid December, a 4-1 away win, a 5-0 home win.  if we'd started the season with the same home form we'd be a lot closer to Derby.

1 hour ago, Johnnyrotten said:

Even if Charles is fit against Pompey and Posh I expect he won't score from open play 😀 I still hope he's fit though, coz we need as many potential scorers as possible for the run in / play offs.  And I'd be chuffed to bits to see him score the winner in the 96th minute at Posh to secure promotion.

We've missed those 2, no doubt.  But there's a flaw in those "10 game" stats.  The last block is 3 homes and 7 aways! 

And the aways include 3 bogey grounds plus another top 6 challenger.  How many points do folk realistically think we would have got from those 10 at any time, given our general inconsistency?  Maybe we should have beaten Charlton and Exeter, but no more than we should have beaten Reading, Carlisle, Burton etc when we were "on form".

I still say our recent form is typical of the season, I don't know when we expected the results to be better against the same calibre opposition.  Undefeated at home since mid December, a 4-1 away win, a 5-0 home win.  if we'd started the season with the same home form we'd be a lot closer to Derby.

First part of the season we were in much better form in my view. The general picture, feel, results, performances and some results that we hadn’t been picking up in previous seasons: Wycombe away, a local rival win at home with Blackpool, comfortable win at home against Derby, some other good away wins and runs of form that cemented our place as top challenger for promotion.

While I accept the usual Wigan/Blackpool/Derby aways were always going to be tricky in this 2nd half of season (and this Is the bit I understand we disagree on) with the form we’d had in the first part of season still relatively fresh and with our main striker/keeper available we’d have stood a much better chance of turning some of those bogey games into points.

The Blackpool game Coleman had a stinker.

And despite the previous record you state, the Derby and Wigan games were that close, arguably with us the better side, with the better chances, Charles very much could (and that’s all we can say) have made the small/marginal difference.

Otherwise what would he have been in the side to do? Evatt wouldn’t have dropped him would he because he hasn’t previously had (in your opinion) as good a record? Why couldn’t one of those games have been like a Plymouth, Barnsley, Peterborough game when Charles has scored against top opposition?

It’s all hypothetical nonsense really, but I’m not having it that Charles chances of scoring differ that much depending on opposition, that his ability level only takes him to a certain level of team in L1. I’m guessing, but wasn’t it Denmark he scored against for NI?!

And I think the pre-game odds, hopefully when he’s playing against Bristol Rovers and Portsmouth won’t be much different and will back me up on that.

Edited March 31, 20242 yr by desperado

I wanna see from GW 30 how our form stacks up with your rest of the top 6 because I think we've all dropped points , I bet there's only two teams in the top 6 form table in that time. 

1 hour ago, Arrested development said:

I wanna see from GW 30 how our form stacks up with your rest of the top 6 because I think we've all dropped points , I bet there's only two teams in the top 6 form table in that time. 

Last 10 Games

Pos	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
1	Lincoln City	10	8	2	0	26	3	23	26
2	Portsmouth	10	8	2	0	20	6	14	26
3	Derby	10	7	0	3	16	6	10	21
4	Barnsley	10	5	3	2	17	17	0	18
7	Peterborough	10	5	0	5	19	17	2	15
13	Bolton	10	3	4	3	17	14	3	13

FWIW, Reading are 5th in the form table over the last 10

Similar situation to what we faced in 92/93.

Win our last 5 games…….

11 hours ago, desperado said:

Similar situation to what we faced in 92/93.

Win our last 5 games…….

Just checked ... that's our longest winning run to end a season.

Won the last 4 on 5 separate occasions, but only time we've won last five.

(so far 😁)

Think we won 15 of the last 19 games that season so we probably had more momentum then. 

1 hour ago, jayjayoghani said:

Think we won 15 of the last 19 games that season so we probably had more momentum then. 

This is our run at the end of that season.

Went 13 unbeaten before the Bradford loss then won last five. We were 8th at the start of this run.

20 Feb 1993	Blackpool	A	D	1	1
27 Feb 1993	Hartlepool United	A	W	2	0
06 Mar 1993	Leyton Orient	H	W	1	0
09 Mar 1993	Mansfield Town	H	W	2	1
13 Mar 1993	Port Vale	A	D	0	0
20 Mar 1993	Exeter City	H	W	4	1
23 Mar 1993	Burnley	A	W	1	0
27 Mar 1993	Fulham	H	W	1	0
30 Mar 1993	Rotherham United	H	W	2	0
03 Apr 1993	Mansfield Town	A	D	1	1
06 Apr 1993	Stockport County	H	W	2	1
10 Apr 1993	Wigan Athletic	A	W	2	0
12 Apr 1993	Swansea City	H	W	3	1
17 Apr 1993	Bradford City	A	L	1	2
24 Apr 1993	Chester City	H	W	5	0
27 Apr 1993	AFC Bournemouth	A	W	2	1
30 Apr 1993	Hull City	A	W	2	1
04 May 1993	Stoke City	H	W	1	0
08 May 1993	Preston North End	H	W	1	0

When I was over at Xmas met up with the guy who gave the penalty away against Preston on the last day. Didn't mention it 🙂

He's a big Bolton fan btw.  

22 minutes ago, jayjayoghani said:

When I was over at Xmas met up with the guy who gave the penalty away against Preston on the last day. Didn't mention it 🙂

He's a big Bolton fan btw.  

I know Si (Burton) well, often have a laugh about that! He is a big Bolton fan, often seen home and away.