That’s as may be but there is no denying that our form has dipped badly. As posted elsewhere, we are 16th in the form table after the last seven rounds of football with just nine points and five goals from those matches.
If that form continues until the end of the season then we won’t finish in one of the automatic places. It’s as simple as that.
Obviously we all hope that the bout of illness affecting the squad will soon pass, BTA will be back, Rudoni and others will rediscover their form and the squad will be strengthened. I most certainly haven’t given up hope - we are still in a good position - but the recent wobble does concern me.
Our form has dropped off because it was always going to. A slow start because of the draws, but you're never going to keep up with winning nearly every game for a quarter of a season. We were supposed to be finished as soon as we couldn't put out our first team yet I can't remember the last time we played our 1st 11.
So we've played what everyone agreed was a hard run of games for 2 months and had everything thrown at our squad and we've opened up a nice gap. Always thought Middlesbrough would struggle with just 2 decent goalscorers. That's now 4 games on the bounce without a goal. Now that's a wobble.
Unless 2 sides come out of the pack with sustained runs the gap should be big enough. They need to average around 0.5 points more than us per game. They also have to keep playing each other. And soon silly season starts where the relegation threatened sides start getting unexpected results. Other than Ipswich it would be a deluded supporter that expected their side to go past us.