Your guide to Argyle's Championship run-in

Discover who has the toughest relegation run-in

Welcome to the perpetual chaos that is the Championship relegation battle – and one that looks like it will go down to the wire.

For one week, we’re going to stop the hand-wringing about Fozball and Argyle’s form and concentrate our minds on the task for Championship survival.

I said that I would give Foster the Wednesday and Blackburn games before forming an opinion on his future – and change in the approach witnessed in the latter means I’m comfortable waiting until the international break before hitting the panic button

A sorry loss against Preston, however, could be the last straw. We need some of the fight we showed against Blackburn.

But there are nine games left of the season – so I felt that this was the right time to have a deep dive into the run-in, and look exactly at what’s coming up.

The fixtures

Above you’ll see the fixtures for the rest of the season. There are plenty of opportunities to pick up points.

The glass half full view: Four of the nine games are against direct relegation rivals – and Bristol City are already home and hosed. What’s more, 5 of our 9 games are at Home Park.

The glass half empty view: Only one of our games is against a team with nothing to play for. As with the nature of this league, you’re either in the relegation battle or the play-off push. There’s barely any in-between. Every game will be a contest.

The rivals

So who has the best run in of the nine (!) teams in the relegation mix?

If you average the league position of the rivals, the list above shows Argyle’s fixture difficulty.

By averaging out the league position of each team, Argyle have a middling run in – and it’s Blackburn Rovers who have the hardest of the fixtures. Rovers play Leicester, Leeds, Ipswich, AND Southampton, with a casual fixture against Coventry for good measure.

Above you can see the run-in averaged on the form table, averaged over the last six games home and away.

Millwall have the biggest disconnect between the fixtures and the form of those teams, and may just enjoy greater luck playing Rotherham, Sunderland, and Argyle, who have the worst form in the division.

It’s also in Argyle’s favour that Rotherham, who have the easiest set of fixtures, and are the only nailed-on relegation candidate.

So with (hopefully) two spots up for grabs, and a huge opportunity to pick up points off relegation rivals, Argyle’s run-in has promised.

After the performance of the team since the last time I made a bold prediction that Fozball would lead us to comfortably stay up, I’m not going to make any predictions. But how many points do you think we’ll get from the remaining 9 games?

Worrying form

The Fishy

But how much does form have to play?

Here’s the current form table and it doesn’t make pretty reading. Getting one single point from six from relegation rivals wasn’t a good way to make an impression on the form table.

PPG

Of course, form is temporary and class is permanent – and for Argyle, it’s simply about getting to that magic 50-point mark. You don’t need to have a maths degree to realise we need a point a game.

Our current PPG is just over that, so we don’t need an uptick in form to get to safety. We just need to keep doing what we’re doing, which does feel like a low bar.

What’s more, it’s interesting that we’re trending further from the black line in the Foster era than we were in the early season.

Big Nigel Lonwijk goes nuts

Nigel Lonwijk scored a sumptuous overhead kick for Wycombe Wanderers last weekend, which you can watch above.

While it’s not quite Garnacho-esque, it’s a top-drawer athletic strike – and surely a shoe-in for League One goal of the year. Great to see him doing well.