Will two more wins see us promoted?
No. I think that matching Bolton’s next four results will see us promoted. That’s fact.
I’ve kind of ruled Bradford out a little bit, although they’ve not got too bad a run-in actually, so we do have to keep an eye on Bradford as well. But I think there’s 16 points between us, which is a bit more.
So really, we just have to take the same result from four games as Bolton and Bradford take from four games. If you pick, on paper, what look to be our easiest games, you’ve got Orient at home, Wimbledon at home, Rotherham at home and Doncaster away. Those are four games that you would imagine a team in our position will look to win two or three of and draw one or two of.
Then we need to match a random four-game selection for Bolton. Bolton have got a couple of relatively easy games now, but then they’ve got Plymouth away, Stockport at home, Cardiff away, Huddersfield at home and Bradford away. So as long as we get the same four results from the games I’ve mentioned as Bolton get in the games I’ve also mentioned, then we’ll go up.
It’s the same with Bradford. You look at the games they’ve got left, and we need to match them. They’ve got Plymouth at home, which is tough, Wycombe away, which is tough, Stevenage at home and Bolton at home. So as long as in the four games I’ve picked, we match those results, then we’ll go up.
That’s what I’m looking at. I’m not really looking at it in terms of two wins, three wins, four wins and all that. I’m looking at it as, we just need to match those results, and it’s that simple.
Are you confident the squad depth will get us over the line?
I don’t want to become a TikTok meme, which is probably why I’m writing this rather than videoing it, but I’m fairly confident that we’ve got a deep enough squad to ensure that we’re competitive in our remaining nine games. That’s the politician’s answer.
You look at this weekend, for instance. You’ve got Dom Jefferies, who I think we’re still easing back in from his operation. You’ve got Jack Moylan, who came off early yesterday and had the dead leg a week or so ago, missed a game, so he’s potentially somebody we’re nursing through it a little bit.
Adam Jackson is out, Oscar Thorn is out, James Collins is out, Freddie Draper is out. Adam Reach started on the bench, and you wonder whether that was an injury issue or not. That’s a lot.
In the 2020-21 season, you point at Tom Hopper, Jorge Grant and Liam Bridcutt, and that decimated the squad. Then we were bringing in the likes of Callum Morton, who looked a little bit soft.
Now, we’ve got Rob Street, who is technically the third-choice number nine. It doesn’t look that way, by the way, but at the beginning of the season, James Collins and Freddie Draper were probably ahead of him because Street was playing out wide.
We’ve got Alfie Lloyd coming on, Ryan Oné coming on. We can’t settle between even Varfolomeev and Tom Bayliss. Ryley Towler can come in and play. We’ve got Deji Elerewe waiting in the wings to get on, and that’s without Adam Jackson coming back.
You’ve got Erik Ring, who just can’t get a kick, can’t get in the side at all. So I think we’ve got sufficient depth to get us over the next nine games, bar any sort of mass incident like a breakout of flu or something like that.