THREATS

LACK OF REGULATION

In my opinion, what we do is good, but if the landscape never changes, it gives us a ceiling. If every season a Birmingham go up, another big club (Cardiff maybe) come down. League One won’t suddenly be rubbish in six years time, the natural settling of things seem to make it better every single season. We’re looking for something to level that playing field, and regulation is it.

The football regulator has seemingly been put on hold as we change government, but if it doesn’t happen or is continually delayed, it makes our job harder. What is it a threat to? Well, not our League One status, but certainly our aspirations of getting promoted the ‘right’ way, with managed losses and developing players as we do it.

KEY INJURIES

As always, injuries are a threat. They were back in 2020, and they still are now. I’m not talking about any injuries, though; I’m looking at one or two key players.

Ethan Erhahon. Paudie O’Connor. Ben House. Tendayi Darikwa. In my opinion, these are 2024’s key players, as Liam Bridcutt, Tom Hopper, and Jorge Grant were back in 2020. If we were to lose two or three of these to long term injuries, it would weaken the side. We’d have better cover, and maybe in the case of Ben were could manage, but we absolutely could not afford to lose Ethan Erhahon for any length of time, and in my opinion, the same goes for Paudie and Tendayi. It’s a threat we’ve done well to mitigate, but a threat, all the same.

POOR FORM

There’s literally nothing you can do about this. I’m looking at the table and wondering if maybe, we might just be in with a shout of top six this season. It’s a quiet optimism, a sort of unspoken hope rather than anything solid, and the one thing that could do us is a bad run of form. After six matches last season, we had 11 points (1.8 per game) and were top six, but we fell away, losing silly matches, falling down a much weaker table. By the time we lost to Blackpool, we averaged 1.2 points per game, having played 26 matches.

After just four matches this season, played over the same period, we have nine points (2.25 per game). We’re right up there, in with a shout, but unlike last season, we have to find a rhythm. Here’s the thing – even if we averaged 1.5 points a game between now and New Year’s Day, we could find ourselves on around 38 points from 23 matches – six points more than last season having played three fewer games.

That’s promotion form, but a loss of that form is a threat to our push up the table.