Phil Sumbler22 July 2020.ย ย The night that a seemingly impossible situation delivered as the Swans turned around a three point and five goal deficit over Nottingham Forest to reach the Championship play offs and extend the first season under Steve Cooper by two more games.
It was one of those footballing nights you don’t expect but one you always remember as the Swans scored three times in the last 25 minutes of the game to secure that play-off berth at the expense of Forest, who themselves conceded three times in the last 17 minutes of their game.
When you look back at then you wonder how it happened and now you fast forward to now and look at a Swansea side that has the same number of points with six games to go as we had at that corresponding time two seasons ago.ย Can history repeat itself twice?ย Nothing is impossible, or is it?
As it stands this morning the Swans find themselves eight points off the promotion places with six games left to play.ย ย The starting point is we do have a game in hand over most of the teams ahead of us – the challenge of that is the game in hand is against 2nd placed Bournemouth.
Put the difficulty of the opponents to one side though and assume the game in hand is won and the gap to the play-offs is just five points with five games to go.ย ย Certainly not unsurmountable but will require good form and a series of results elsewhere to go in our favour.ย ย But we know that can happen.
A home game against Barnsley and a trip to Reading both present us with good chances of maximum returns (not underestimating either of those sides) and we could be sat here this time next week just a couple of points off the play offs if results go our way elsewhere.ย Equally of course we could lose one/both of those games and be out of sight of the play offs but that is the nature of a long shot at the best of times.
With six games to go we know we will need likely 13+ points to reach the play offs and in all real likelihood a glance at the table now would say probably 15 so we need to win five from our remaining fixtures which are
Barnsley (H)
Reading (A)
Middlesbrough (H)
Bournemouth (H)
Forest (A)
QPR (H)
None of that is impossible although it will take us to be on our best form for all of those remaining games especially as the final four all have their own aspirations of achieving promotion whilst the first two are fighting to stay in the division at the opposite end (although we could help Reading with that ambition on Friday by beating Barnsley)
It is difficult to see that this could happen but whilst there is little talk of the play offs within SA1 that doesn’t mean the faint possibility is completely lost on Russell Martin and his players.
It goes without saying that the next two games are crucial given that all the remaining six are equally as crucial but as we head into the final straight of the season if we aim high, look for five wins and hope for the best then anything is possible.
Isn’t it?
Yes, like many of us I’ve been looking at the table as well. We’ll need to win all of the remaining games to have a chance. That would get us to 75 pts. At least two of the teams above us (5th place to 13th place) will get to 72 or 73 pts and then it becomes a goal differential battle. Toughest game may be @ Forest with their current form being what it is. The most interesting run-in is Bournemouth’s; all of their opponents are in the top 13, including a string of 4 games of Fulham, @ Swans, @ Blackburn, and Forest.
As the cliche goes, focus on your run-in “one game at a time”. And, “you can’t win them all if you don’t win the 1st one”!