With the question of “will we make the playoffs?” definitively answered, I thought it’d be worth starting a new thread to discuss runners, riders, and results in the post season.
League form can go out of the window in the famously unpredictable EFL promotion playoffs, but if you’re looking for something to provide a bit of a confidence boost - here is a mini league table based on the 2024/25 regular season matches between the four playoff teams. It looks even better when you consider some of these matches happened before the Northampton epiphany.
Comments
couldn’t of hand picked ourselves a more favourable semi final.
at Wembley I’d fancy us. No way do either Stockport or Orient sell 35k tickets
Godden will be the difference….
I really fancy us to get through, and would be disappointed if we didn’t.
The reassuring thing is that none of the other teams will have thought “yeah we fancy playing Charlton”. We are definitely a team to avoid.
Having supported Charlton for 40 years this naturally signals danger to me! These things often have a way of coming back to bite you, as Bolton found out last season. They smashed Oxford 5-0 in the league in March, thought they were as good as promoted when they got them at Wembley...........then lost the play off final 2-0.
We know that Wycombe are broken: they'd been in the top three since October, including spells of leading the division, but a late-season collapse including ending the regular season with three defeats has seen them drop to fifth and not even getting the second leg at home. Their record against the top seven (which I'd put on an earlier thread and included Reading because, at the time, they were still in contention) was woeful and I think they're just making up the numbers.
Orient are in a similar position to us in that they've come from way back in the pack since mid-December to claim a play-off spot (after our Crawley shambles they were a few points and places behind us so they've done really well to finish sixth). They'll be very confident with their own form and also know that they are more than capable of giving us a good game for 90 minutes ... it's just after 90 minutes they had a big problem against us! 🤣 (You could argue that they've had plentiful revenge for the first defeat by scoring two stoppage time goals to beat us in our BDSM Pizza Trophy match in December then we got our own back in March.)
Stockport have been in the top six most of the season. There was a little wobble for a few weeks in October and November where they dropped back to mid-table (a spell that included a staggering 5-0 defeat at home to Wycombe, of all sides!) but they recovered and have been the "steady Eddie" of the play-off four.
Stockport and Orient have a win each in their head-to-head clashes this season, both going to the away side. The O's won 4-1 at Edgeley Park in September and the Hatters gained revenge, 1-0, at Brisbane Road in February.
Can we beat Stockport or Orient at Wembley? Of course we can. I'd like to think we'd have a considerably bigger crowd behind us than either of those two which would give the game more of a "home" feel for us ... and we don't lose at home now!
TC and Small (assuming they're both fit, of course) would relish the wide open spaces, the Sniffer Dog Hitman can't stop scoring and if the POTY is back we've got a sound defence that rarely gets breached.
Prediction:
Charlton beat Wycombe over two legs (comfortably).
Orient beat Stockport on penalties after two drawn matches.
Followed by ...
Charlton 2 (Godden, TC) Orient 0
A record-breaking number of clean sheets in the season, new Wembley heroes and finally out of this sh1tty division.
Now watch us get humped by Wycombe ...
If you expand that league table further to include the 2 promoted teams, I suspect the form is even greater in our favour compared to the other playoff sides
Actually, we were bloody marvellous 🙂
Our only defeats were to Birmingham and Wrexham.
EDIT: And Blues only defeat was to us!
I just think Charlton have always enjoyed the role of underdog far more. And that’s the danger for me.
The Wycombe players and manager will have learnt a lot from our last match. They will be watching that video back and will address everything we did to stop us doing it again. They might also look back at what they were doing better earlier in the season and show us more of that ’version of themselves ’ next time.
I’d take a 0-0 draw away if offered it now.
It will be interesting though if we get to Wembley. You’d assume that it will be a borderline home match for us given the massive disparity in the number of fans from each side.