Last time here – A Baz Assist

The Championship is heading for one of its most exciting conclusions at the top of the table, with three teams fighting for the last automatic promotion spot and three teams fighting for the last play-off spot. Five of the games kicking off at Saturday lunchtime have something huge riding on them. We are playing in one of the games that doesn’t as our game can only potentially have a bearing on whether we finish third, fourth or fifth, which will of course make a difference to whether we are at home or away in the first leg of our play-off semi-final and what days and times the semi-final will be played. Unless we win against Preston away, we are 100% finishing fifth and playing the first leg at home next Saturday, with a 1230 kick-off. I would say that the most likely opponent for us is Middlesbrough but you never know because the last day does have a habit of throwing up strange results and it would certainly be very strange if Ipswich didn’t beat QPR at home and Millwall didn’t beat Oxford at home. Middlesbrough are away game at Wrexham, which has implications for both automatic promotion and the final playoff place.

Preston started the season well and included in their early results, a 2-0 win at St Mary’s in what turned out to be Will Still’s last game before he was sacked. Oddly enough, Will has emerged this week giving an interview where the major takeaways were that he blamed his failure on Russell Martin and that he wasn’t used to talking to players in English. You can see why he struggled so much with Englist, despite both of his parents being English and the fact that he spoke it perfectly. It’s a little known fact that he was coach of Preston’s Under-14s in 2012, where I assume he spoke English. Even if it’s partly true, it’s really dumb to cite it as a reason, especially given that the German manager who took over from him seemingly has no issues when English is most definitely his second language.

With Will clutching at straws for reasons as to why he failed, I’d like to offer a much more feasible reason for a sacking. He basically, didn’t have a fucking clue and was just throwing stuff at the wall and hoping it stuck. I would definitely argue that the reason we are only in the playoffs are not in the automatic spots is that Will was fucking useless and the formation he played, with three at the back, was one of the very early handicaps for Tonda Eckert who didn’t have the confidence at the very start of his tenure, to bin it off straight away.

Back to matters at hand on the pitch. Preston beat us in the Will Still death throes match, with an inspired performance by the goalkeeper Daniel Iversen and the threat upfront being provided by Lewis Dobbin. They completely deserved to beat us and it’s a bit of a mystery why they have fallen away as much as they have, to become the very definition of a mid-table side. 45 games played, 15 wins, 15 draws, 15 losses, and in the last 6 games, 2 wins, 2 draws and 2 defeats. Paul Heckinbottom is rumoured to be taking charge of his last game as Preston manager today, with a takeover on the horizon.

Our team selection will tell us how much of a big deal Tonda thinks this game is, bearing in mind that we have played eight games in four weeks and the next one after this is undeniably fucking huge. I suspect that anyone who is not 100% will be left out of this game and some will get a rest from the brutal schedule we’ve been on. We’ve sold nearly 6000 tickets for this game, a lot of which will have been purchased thinking that the game would really have a lot riding on it. It will be interesting to see how many forsake the long journey North and keep a bit of money back for the away trip in the playoff semi-final.