Assuming that we have finally broken the back of the losing mentality, and I happen to believe its a fair assumption not because of the recent wins but more of the manner of those wins. Last season and the first part of this, we seemed to be all to ready to give in, these days we seem to have grown a spine.

The defence is as we all know perfectly sound, I don't believe that Nelson will go in January; In the summer certainly but I think Nelson would like to see us regain our place in league one. In midfield, now that he has settled in, Boland has given us what Tinkler did a few years ago and with the addition of Monkhouse and a fit Sweeney we have a competent midfield. The forward line is still a bit concerning, Duffy is performing very well but how long is he here? We need to either sign the lad up or sign a replacement after Christmas. Of our other existing strikers none seem to be capable of hitting the net regularly.

So the key seems to be Duffy or a new Duffy. Sure we have Porter and Brown to come back in but neither have set the top scoring lists alight. Jon Daly is in an unfortunate position in that he tends to bring out the long ball game in the team which we are demonstrably no good at. He has of course scored 8 goals but a couple of them were penalties and the rest were in three games two months ago. Hardly prolific! and taking into account his entire Pools career, we'd be foolish to rely on him to get us the goals. I still say he's a excellent centre half playing up front.

Anyway, including the dire first part of the season we are amazingly in the play off positions and have averaged 1.53 points a game. Since the beginning of November our average has jumped to 2.4 points per game. Now lets not kid ourselves that we can continue to amass points at that latter rate but somewhere between the two seems reasonable. Should we keep our average around the 2 points a game we would end up on 82 points which is normally good enough for top three or four. Even dropping as low as 1.7 should see us on 75 points.

The only fly in the ointment is that this is all theoretical so is complete bolox.

I refuse to comment.

I produced the promot-u-lator two seasons ago and the escap-u-lator last season, both based on points per game, and both times it put the mockers on us.

Yes, it's MY fault we're not rubbing shoulders with Leeds, Sunderland, Birmingham and Southend!

But last season we didn't have enough points per game to be statistically significant. You musn't blame yourself for that

The big 'ifs' are the loan players.
I think Monkhouse will go back to Swindon as soon as he has regained full fitness and my big concern is that any permanent deal for Duffy will involve Nelson going to Hull.
If we can get Duffy on a season long loan (and Nelson on a new contract),
then we may indeed be in a play off spot (or better) come May.
Losing either (or both of those two), without suitable replacements in January and the gloom may return.

League 1 football might appeal to both of them, shed the deadwood, bring in some decent new boys and away we go.
Simple isn't it !

Oh and get a new manager

We already have a ready made replacement central defender in place as withnessed at Rotherham last season.