While Mowbray believes playoffs, and indeed promotion is unlikely to occur this season he has said what he thinks SAFC will need for a playoff push to be successful.
HOW MANY POINTS CAN WE PICK UP?
“Listen we’ve said that all season and yet the gentleman quoted, There’s some big teams, in terms of being in the Premier League in the last few years, that have been hovering around and hopeful of trying to make the playoffs in front of clubs like Sunderland who have come out of League One. We have to see how we get on, a couple of them, West Brom and Watford, we have to play of course. Preston are right up there, they’re seventh in the league having an amazing season. We’ve got some tough games on paper and yet I’ve always found, and you get to this stage in the season, that the teams who are scrambling around for points at the bottom are genuinely the hardest games and they can find a way to win football matches. That’s why I think it was important, the win for us at Cardiff, scrambling for their lives to get away from the bottom and to put in a really solid, steady performance was good. I haven’t really looked at Birmingham but I know Huddersfield, now Neil’s got them out of the bottom three, but they are a game or two or three from dropping back into it as well so they’ll be fighting for everything they’ve got and they’ve beaten teams like Middlesbrough and Watford and whoever else it was over recent weeks, drew at Blackburn at the weekend having been two up. There are no easy games, all tough, I wouldn’t sit here and give you a points total because I haven’t got a clue other than I just want us to be ready for each game and try and win each game.”
WHAT ROLE CAN THE FANS PLAY?
“Again I go back to our record at home, the crowds have been amazing, they haven’t seemed to drop off at all, the last one was over 40,000 I think. Maybe they could be a little disappointed about the results at home. I think coming out of League One I hope that the football knowledge of the average person who comes to watch a football team understands that it’s never easy to get promoted and to be really strong in this league. What we’ve tried to do is be competitive and the message when I joined this club was everyone would be ok as long as we solidify the club in this division, we’re not scrambling at the end in a relegation battle. That’s probably where we are now, because we are four points out of the playoffs we should keep going and keep believing. Let’s wait and see, I’m conscious of why I think we haven’t won enough games at home. I think a natural goalscorer at home he’d put himself into positions where you can dominate possession, dominate the ball, play around the opposition box but you need someone who lives off scoring goals. The world highlighted player is Erling Haaland, he has less than a dozen touches in most football matches and he’s on about seven hattricks basically because his touches are in the six-yard box and he scores from the great chances that are created. They are invaluable, and I don't say that flippantly, they are invaluable, these people who live off scoring and want desperately before a ball is kicked, score twenty goals every season. They are really important for football clubs.”
