We’re now 13 Championship fixtures into the season and, in what would likely come as a massive shock to our fans at the conclusion of last season, we sit three points clear at the top of the table and a massive 10 points clear of seventh place. The next five games look relatively tough however, with Coventry being a bogey team for us and Millwall, West Brom and Sheffield United all currently gunning for promotion. A point away to QPR, whilst still overall a positive due to going down a man, also means there’s not much room for error away at Deepdale (especially with the way Leeds United are picking up points).
I think if you’re going to look at the next five games, there’s three we should be aiming to get maximum points from. As mentioned, Coventry City are a sticking point for us and we’ve only beaten them 12 times out of 46 matches in our entire history. At the time of writing however, they are a side in the bottom half and we need to be earning three points against those sorts of teams at home if we want to maintain our current position. West Brom at home will be tougher, they sit in sixth place but they also haven’t seen victory in seven matches, with five draws and two losses. It may be a case of it being the right time to face the Baggies then. Our most imminent fixture is the one away to Preston North End, they are fighting relegation currently but they do have a good home record so it won’t be a walkover. A win is still needed I feel though, dropping four or five points in two games against teams looking down not up won’t do our confidence any favours.
Millwall and Sheffield United are games I’d take a point from as of right now, Millwall are seventh and have just beaten Burnley at home. The Den is never a nice place to play, and a repeat of our result over the last two seasons there (two 1-1 draws) would do us nicely I feel, assuming we’ve defeated Preston and Coventry that is of course. Sheffield United is definitely our toughest game of the lot, and if we have some room for slip ups after the preceding four games I think we can go into this one without too much worry, a point would be the aim then I think.
There are some squad matters to discuss going into our next run of games. Bellingham will be a big miss for the next three matches, it’s likely Browne, Rigg (it looks like he’s made a swift return from his injury after missing QPR) and Neil will likely be our midfield three. Those three are more than capable of getting us some results though, so that’s not the worry. What is the worry is that Rigg is on four yellow cards and so is Bellingham. You get a one match suspension if you get yourself booked five times before gameweek 19 (weirdly Jobe’s red card doesn’t count towards that). If both of them are out at once, a not too unlikely prospect, then we’d have to call upon Poveda (he should be back sometime in the next five), Aouchiche or Aleksiç. I believe it would have to be between Aouchiche and Milan as they have both played games more recently than Poveda. Aouchiche has been doing quite well for the U21s and Aleksiç is clearly a highly promising talent. Aouchiche probably is just about ahead of the Serbian in the pecking order in my opinion though. I think Milan can afford to wait a bit longer because he’s younger and most likely isn’t fluent in English yet. There’s also Ba but I think he’s better out wide.
Speaking about out wide, Patrick Roberts is also one yellow away from suspension. If he’s out the solution could be moving Mundle to the right, putting Isidor on the left and then Mayenda/Connolly through the middle. If you want to keep Mundle and Isidor in their natural positions there’s Ba available for the right wing. You could even put Rusyn on the left, have Isidor in the middle and then have Mundle on the right. The point is there’s a few ways to work around that potential outcome in the next few games, so it shouldn’t be too great a stress. I think I’d favour Isidor on the left, Mundle on the right and Mayenda up front personally.
More of a stress is Trai Hume, also on four yellows, if he has to miss a match I guess the only option would be to move O’Nien out to the right and have Ballard and Mepham as the centre backs. Unless there’s a solution I’m not seeing? A right back is a must in January, even if it’s just on loan because we don’t have enough squad depth there.
Patterson will return after Preston as well, but do you drop Moore? If he keeps another clean sheet he will have kept three in a row so it would feel a bit unfair to drop him as soon as our number one returns. You may not want to get into a situation where you are constantly chopping and changing the goalkeeper though, as it may cause frustration for Patterson.
Overall, I think we can deal with any of the reasonably foreseeable future problems quite well (maybe with the exception of a Hume suspension) and I think 10 points from our next five is an entirely reasonable goal. There’s such a big gap between us and seventh as of right now though, that even if we did drop out of the automatic spots we wouldn’t be out of the promotion race entirely bar a monumental collapse.
