It really is the business end of the season now, isn’t it? Sunderland find themselves in sixth place, and nine points behind MK Dons in third. With Dons and Plymouth sitting on 76 and 74 points respectively, it’s safe to say they’re fighting each other for the top two play-off places.
It would take a minor miracle for those two to drop out of the play-offs. But beyond fourth place, it’s a scrap between Oxford United, ourselves, Sheffield Wednesday and Wycombe Wanderers for two play off places. Just three points currently separate fifth from eighth.
Oxford have an extremely hard run-in. They have to face Plymouth, Sunderland, MK Dons and league leaders Rotherham. The Millers may already be on the beach, but the other fixtures will be anything but easy. Their next game is Plymouth, and neither team can afford to lose. Our best bet is probably for Plymouth to win and accept that third and fourth are unattainable. Sunderland essentially have a 50% chance of making the play-offs, so the tighter it gets the better for us.
I would argue that Sunderland have the best run of fixtures, despite having to still play Oxford and Plymouth. We’ve got Rotherham on a Tuesday night, but it’s the second-last game of the season. Hopefully they’ve already won promotion by then and take their foot off the gas. We’re unbeaten in our last six games, which under Lee Johnson would have meant that we could expect a winless run going into the play-offs. However, Alex Neil seems to have flattened the waves and I honestly can’t see us losing more than two consecutive games under the new gaffer. He’s improved our defence despite Callum Doyle’s burnout, and turned us into a well-oiled machine that is hard to beat and able to grind out wins, even when we’re not playing well.
The worrying thing is that Sheffield Wednesday are breathing down our necks, just a point behind. They’ve also got a game in hand, against Crewe, so if they win that they could overtake us into sixth. They’ve had a pretty underwhelming season, and seem to be extremely inconsistent, much like ourselves. We’ve seen that first hand- we were put to the sword in a 3-0 defeat, only to smash them 5-0 just a month later! On their day Sheffield Wednesday are a strong side, although I’d still back Alex Neil’s men to pip them in the play-offs. With MK Dons, Wycombe and Portsmouth still to face the Owls, they face a tough (but not impossible) task.
Last but not least is Wycombe. Despite currently being eighth in the league on 66 points and having played the same number of games as Sunderland and Oxford, I wouldn’t put it past Wycombe to fight their way into the play-offs. They never make it easy for the opposition, as we saw down at Adams Park. We thought we had it won when Ross Stewart scored after 93 minutes, only for The Chairboys to rescue a point after 98. A physical side like Wycombe can never be ruled out, and they’d love to put a spanner in the works.
We saw earlier this season what a fully fit Sunderland team can do, hopefully with a two-week international break, the youngsters such as Doyle are refreshed and raring to go. If we can win the ‘winnable’ games, and perhaps steal points off our rivals Oxford and Plymouth, we should have enough quality to get into the play-offs come April.
