The case for the defence

A quickie blog this evening, ahead of tomorrow's game. There was an interesting post on the green room II this week. I'd better re-phrase that as it makes it sound like an interesting post is a rarity on that forum, which of course isn't the case. One of many interesting posts that caught my eye (that's better!) came from will_ran, who posted the following stats:

05-06 w3 d3 l4 pts12 (-4)
06-07 w4 d4 l2 pts16 (+3)
07-08 w4 d2 l4 pts14 (-2)
08-09 w1 d4 l5 pts7 (-11)
09-10 w2 d4 l4 pts10 (-1)
10-11 w2 d2 l5 pts8 (-8) (from first nine games)

In case it's not obvious that's YTFC's record for the first 10 games of the season from 2005-06 up 'til now. It's interesting because it shows that a win tomorrow at Walsall will actually show an improvement in our early season form for the last 2 season's in a row, albeit a very marginal improvement. Even a loss tomorrow would leave us with more points after 10 games than in the 08-09 season, so just maybe some of the doom and gloom that's been around over the last few weeks (including in this blog, before anyone says anything!) has been overdone. Of course the bare stats don't prove anything on their own, don't take into account who our opponents were each season and don't say anything much about where we're going to end up at the end of this season; nevertheless they do show that we've been in worse situations at this stage of the season in the past and come through it successfully - if continued League 1 survival is our definition of success. Which in my view is as good a definition for this club as any under our current ownership.

Well, I thought it was interesting! As mentioned above the Glovers travel to Walsall tomorrow, the Saddlers being one of only three clubs below us in the L1 table currently. The bookies make the home side 13/10 favourites for the win, the draw is priced at 23/10 and a Glovers win at 21/10. My fiver's going on the draw. Running total: +£5.25p. Win, lose or draw, I will try not to over-react on Sunday!