[Devongone]

Well SGB for a man who clearly loves language you are also interested enough by the model in your head of the teams' relative merits to follow it through to create a points total. I used to enjoy doing that too - Covid modelers may have put me off recently. I'm sure that like me you don't for a minute think it is a step that makes you any more likely to be right. But it does make essentially abstract ideas more "real", because it applies them to the external reality of the games to be played. And when you see what you have created sometimes you wonder if it really does match what you were thinking, don't you? (Did I really think Torquay would fade so badly? Stockport just won 0-5 away, won't they come with a rattle?)

Einstein loved his thought experiments. They turned into science. I really meant it that I loved seeing an old bloke, like me, playing the same games in his head that I've been playing since I was about nine. I didn't mean it to be disparaging in any way. If anything you make me feel a little less like I need to grow up. Why bother when "no one gets outta here alive"?

For us fans I think the play-offs would be a realistic ambition for Chesterfield this season. For Mr Rowe and the team, that ambition should be unlimited. I think he's aiming to win it. Years of being a town fan will damp that down for the rest of us.

I think a big factor I mentioned elsewhere is which clubs make best use of National League North and South players ( and even the furlough). Stockport and Sutton are both still improving their sides. Wrexham rarely go long without a transfer dabble. There are good players stranded at that level without a game.

[spireitematt]

Playoffs is the more realistic outcome. Winning the league I think is too much of a big ask especially being 14pts behind Sutton United. Last night we didn't play a game and if we had it would have been against the now extinct Macclesfield Town. As Devon says if Sutton win the league will they want to pay in the region of £250,000 plus to rip up the 3G pitch and lay turf?

We should be aiming for a position now between 4th/7th and if we did get a spot there then we would have to play a quarter-final, semi-final and then the final. If we did somehow manage to finish 2nd or 3rd in the league then we would play a semi-final and the final if we got there.

So far we've played 23 games and Notts County and Maidenhead both have the same amount of games in hand as ourselves. Other teams around us have 1 or 2 games in hand. The interesting one is how have Altrincham played 28 games? Like SGB says if it is going to be a 42 game season then that means we've got 19 games left to play as it stands, so that means 57 pts left to play for and from those 57 pts we should be looking for another 40 to add to what we've already got which would give us 76 pts which should be enough to get a playoff spot.

As for teams above us and around us in the league table we can't be worried about what they are doing and can't rely on other teams helping us out results wise. It's a case of we need to try and win every game left and treat every game as a cup final to get 3pts to have any chance of getting a playoff spot. This league isn't an easy league it's very competitive and very open.

These are the remaining games left:

13th March - Maidenhead United A
16th March - Sutton United H
20th March - Barnet A
23rd March - No game (were due to play Dover away)
27th March - Weymouth H

2nd April - Eastleigh A
5th April - No game (were due to play Dover at Home)
10th April - Kings Lynn Town A
13th April - Boreham Wood H
17th April - Bromley H
20th April - FC Halifax Town H
24th April - Wrexham A
27th April - Bromley A

1st May - Hartlepool United A
3rd May - Torquay H
8th May - Woking A
11th May - Kings Lynn Town H
15th May - Wealdstone H
22nd May - Dag & Red H
29th May - FC Halifax Town A

Plus we've got to play Aldershot A which hasn't been rearranged yet.

[SaltergateBorn]

I`m not convinced personally about Sutton not wanting promotion. If their ground isn`t acceptable to the EFL what`s to stop them groundsharing with one of their neighbours? They`d have several options to choose from within a few miles` radius. Not ideal admittedly but a price worth paying, I`d have thought, for a crack at league football for the first time in their history.

[Devongone]

The real trouble for a lot of the suburban clubs is that they will find the EFL nothing but a struggle. Players expect more money, as do managers and non-playing staff. A pitch like Sutton's provides an income stream. Grass is nowhere near so flexible and requires a lot of maintenance. I'm sure there are a lot of people at Sutton who want promotion - sports people want to win - but there is bound to be disquiet in the background over their financial position. Remember where their plastic pitch came from - their former manager Paul Doswell, a successful businessman bought it! They clearly don't have great financial clout and are located in an area surrounded by other clubs. Yes they could groundshare, but a ground is a club's identity. Going up at the cost of your identity is a bit Faustian for me. Imagine if the price for us going up was to groundshare in Mansfield.

As for aiming for fourth, I'm not sure that works. There are precedents in this football for teams coming from way off the pace to win it - like Bristol Rovers. The reality is none of the competing clubs are that much better than each other on paper. There is nothing like the dissonance of Man City's attacking power meeting West Brom's defence on Ajayi's day-off. Sutton, Hartlepool and Torquay couldn't guarantee to beat Weymouth, Barnet or King's Lynn. The play-offs would delight me, but I'd bet my bottom dollar Mr Rowe isn't galvanising his players with a team talk about finishing fourth. Doing it is another matter. Maidenhead on Saturday will present a real challenge and their EFL ambitions look more sustainable than Sutton's.

The imponderable is the mental resilience of these teams when the pressure is on. Torquay couldn't help winning, now they've stopped, but they have an excellent manager, if anyone knows where the re-boot button is, it's him. For all that our wins have impressed me, it was the fact that we bounced back from defeat at Stockport to beat two in-form teams that convinced me we were doing more than just talking a good game. Similarly Covid is a wild card in all this. What if Sutton were to have their worst day against us, then a few days later several of their back room staff go down with the virus? They get two or three weeks out of training on top of that memory of playing absolutely pants. Coming out and being the successful Sutton again wouldn't be easy.

[SaltergateBorn]

I`m still not convinced about Sutton, to be honest. For a start, I don`t see that sharing a neighbour`s playing facilities and keeping hold of Gander Green Lane and its revenue stream would be mutually exclusive. To my mind selling the place would actually be the less likely of the two; very lucrative in the short term but very risky in the long term.

Several other clubs that I`ve thought would struggle in the EFL have managed not only to survive but to prosper. The old Wimbledon (how high did they manage to get!), Forest Green, Fleetwood (bigger neighbours just down the road), Accringtpn (how many close neighbours with far bigger pulling power have they got!) all spring to mind. I don`t see proximity as being a particularly big deal these days; with the ease of travel nowadays, a rival doesn`t have to be on the doorstep to compete for support. It`s a few years ago now, but one of my lads lived and worked in Harrogate for a while and I remember him saying to me that if half the people who travelled to Elland Road from there every other Saturday stayed at home and supported their local club, Harrogate would be virtually filling their ground. It also works both ways, of course; people tend to gravitate towards a winning team, even if they`re at a lower level.

I`ve always maintained – and still do – that if a club has the right level of financial backing and is well-managed, they can achieve things that on the face of it really shouldn`t be possible. (Hoffenheim is based in a “town” with a population of just over 3,000 - that`s about a third of the population of Clay Cross - and has played in the Champions League.)

I`ve no idea whether Sutton do have those ingredients, but the fact that they are where they are and that a local businessman was prepared to back them to that extent suggests they just may have. Maybe we`ll find out at the end of the season.

I`m not saying that you`re all wrong and that I`m right: I just don`t think it`s a complete no-brainer by any means.

As far as the Mansfield analogy goes, that`s a subjective decision. Personally – and I can only speak for myself – it`s something I would genuinely have been prepared to consider a couple of years ago. I may not have liked it (I certainly wouldn`t!) but if it had been the only way to unshackle ourselves from the previous regime it`s something I would certainly have been able to tolerate in the short term until another solution appeared.

As far as we are concerned right now, I think we`ll find out next Tuesday where we`re at. If we can win that one on merit, I`ll be starting to get excited – and that`s not good for me at my age.

[Devongone]

The only fact anyone knows about Sutton is the name of their ground. Playing elsewhere might work for a season, but their current team looks good enough to stay up no problem. What then?

As for finance, well their biggest ever signing is Harry Beautyman. Now I know about him, but what can anyone else tell me and he is one of their current stars. That doesn't sound like Harrogate where the millionaire chairman is the manager's dad to me. Commuter belt teams have the advantage of being able to recruit from rejected Premier League academy products - they have the disadvantage that everyone has the opportunity to be a fan of a big team and they don't feel the pull of a home town identity.

Sutton have often been up with the pacesetters in this league and have always fallen back. If Sutton was a racehorse the trainer would be reaching for blinkers.

All that said they are top because so far they have been the best team. But if we can beat Maidenhead I'm sure that given the choice between a blizzard putting the game off and a trip to Whittington Moor, Sutton would be choosing the former (and I wouldn't blame them!)

I think Chesterfield playing home games at Mansfield would have made social distancing look like congestion. Rotherham couldn't pack an athletics track down the road at Meadowhall.

[spireitematt]

I`ve always maintained – and still do – that if a club has the right level of financial backing and is well-managed, they can achieve things that on the face of it really shouldn`t be possible. (Hoffenheim  is based in a “town” with a population of just over 3,000  - that`s about a third of the population of Clay Cross - and has played in the Champions League.)

Hoffenheim were the most hated club in Germany before RB Leipzig because a lot of fans of other traditional clubs didn't like the fact that Hoffenheim were an amateur club and worked there way up the German leagues they were called a 'Plastic club' by other fans very similar to how Manchester City and Chelsea are viewed in England. Other teams in Germany such as Wolfsburg and Bayer Leverkusen aren't liked either because Wolfsburg is owned by Volkswagen and Bayer Leverkusen is owned by Bayer the German pharmaceutical company but the difference is the fans say they have history before the financially injections. Wolfsburg and Bayer Leverkusen were founded by factory workers.

In the early 2000's they were right down near the bottom tier of the German leagues but Dietmar Hopp who owns SAP the German software company used to play for Hoffenheim when he was a teenager and he bought the club in the early 90's when they were at step 8 of the German pyramid and he invested money into Hoffenheim and helped them rise through the leagues eventually into the Bundersliga. He even built a new stadium for Hoffenheim in the Sinsheim area because Hoffenheim is only a village in the town of Sinsheim, that's why there is only a population of 3,000-4,000 in Hoffenheim.

As for RB Leipzig that's like Wimbledon and MK Dons argument but in Germany.

You maybe wondering how I know all this, it's because I follow German football and TSG Hoffenheim (got 2 shirts).

[SaltergateBorn]

Bloody hell, Matt; now that`s knowledge above and beyond! (Matt`s not short for Matthäus, is it?)

[spireitematt]

Bloody hell, Matt; now that`s knowledge above and beyond! (Matt`s not short for Matthäus, is it?

Haha thanks SGB and no it's not.

The reason I know this is because many years ago the Guardian newspaper did a feature on TSG Hoffenheim and their rise to the Bundesliga but I know the argument of the other teams in German football because I used to buy Four Four Two Magazine and they feature a lot of articles on German, Spanish and Italian football and they talked about RB Leipzig and talked about how they aren't particular liked and how certain teams in Germany aren't liked.

There is a famous club in Germany called St Pauli and they are a left wing (politically) club which are anti-racist, pro-LGBT and anti-fascist and they are very well liked by hipsters and left wing people.

I also watch a lot of Spanish 2nd division La Liga football on Youtube.

In Germany they have a rule called the 50+1 rule where clubs have to keep majority of its voting rights in order to compete in the Bundesliga. The whole thing is designed to make sure that club members have majority control of that club by a way of owning 50% shares plus 1% share which protects outside investors from having influence in the club. There is an exception though if a club has been funded and owned by a person or a company for 20 years plus then they can have a controlling stake in the club which is where Hoffenheim, Wolfsburg and Bayer Leverkusen come about and that's why they aren't particular liked by other fans of other clubs, that and also because they are seen not to have as many fans.

As for RB Leipzig they were originally called SSV Markranstädt and they played quite low down in the German pyramid and Red Bull bought the club and playing rights and changed the name to RasenBallsport Leipzig as the Bundesliga wouldn't allow the name 'Red Bull'. Red Bull own several football clubs and have done this with the New York Red Bulls, Red Bull Brasil and FC Red Bull Salzburg they used to be called SV Austria Salzburg until Red Bull bought the club and there is a link between RB Leipzig and FC Red Bull Salzburg. Fans of SV Austria Salzburg set the club up again down in the lower leagues of the Austrian football pyramid very similar to AFC Wimbledon or FC United of Manchester. Red Bull did nearly buy Leeds United a few years ago. It's all very similar to the City Football Group. It's football globalism.

By the way I had to google about Salzburg.

[SaltergateBorn]

Thanks for that, Matt; interesting stuff. I did read somewhere that RB Leipzig were pretty much universally despised in Germany and that the normal model over there was for fan rather than private ownership, as it is in a few other countries. (I`m all for that, by the way; should bring it in over here.) I didn`t know the other stuff, though.

The only St Pauli I`ve heard of over there is the red-light district of Hamburg – allegedly. I only know this, of course, because I erm, erm, read it somewhere. Never been there, obviously, and at my age there`d be no bloody point in going there now. Is it the same St Pauli (he asks out of nothing more than academic interest)? Do they play in red?

My interest in European football only extends as far as Spain, really. I spent some time in Salamanca as a student many, many moons ago and I used to watch the local team UDS Salamanca whilst I was there. Sadly, they went into liquidation – about 10 years ago, I think - but a couple of new clubs were formed out of their ashes, as it were, a few years later; Unionistas de Salamanca and Salamanca UDS. They`ve both been climbing steadily up the leagues the last few years and are in the third tier now Unionistas could be going up again at the end of the season as things stand but UDS could be going the other way.

We seem to have digressed somewhat from Dancing`s original thread title of “Can we do it?” but what the hell. Threads are supposed to wander; this one certainly has.