Having played a game more, and averaging a full point per match less than them for quite a while now.
I think people nearly always overreact on here, but surely nobody can pretend we have been in anything like table-topping form since early December. We've looked like a good Championship side but no more than that. It's a huge challenge for the manager to rediscover the dominance we had before.
I’m concerned about our away form, nothing else at this moment.
Ipswich have been bottle jobs away from home, their away record is comparable to ours. Likewise, Boro have got to come to our place.
I’ll begin to worry if we lost v QPR and fail to beat Oxford. At that point we could genuinely find ourselves 2nd place with Ipswich breathing down our necks facing Boro at home. Beat QPR and Oxford, I’m confident we beat Boro and put daylight between us again.
It’s pretty normal for things to be tight at the top and teams who have started as quickly as we have do experience small drop offs. Look at Leicester and Ipswich in 23/24.
If before the season started, we’d have been told we were 8 points clear of 3rd and top of the table by February, you’d all be buzzing with that. Yet I’m seeing people lose their nerve and it’s a little bit embarrassing - it’s a rut, and Boro, Ipswich and Hill will hit their own spells of bad form.