Will we, won't we?

Half way through the season and now is perhaps a good time to reflect on where we (Airdrieonians) are at. The big question is will we or won't we make the play-offs.

The new league campaign kicked off with what might arguably have been false optimism. After a Lazarus like revival in the '14 part of season 2013/14, we went from being doomed to automatic relegation, to finishing a few points away from the promotion play-offs. That gave many of us, myself included, a real hope that the Diamonds could mount a challenge for promotion to the Championship (I still prefer to call it the First Division, though) this season. Added to that late amazing run of form, we also won all our pre-season friendlies this year, although admittedly the opposition was pretty weak.

So, first league game of the season and our bubble was well and truly burst when - away to Stenny - we lost 1-0. It actually took us until 27th September to record our first league win (albeit in style with a last minute equaliser AND then a cracking winning goal) against Ayr United at Somerset Park.

Our autumn part of the season was on/off, largely due to losing stupid goals in the last 15/20 minutes.

There's been a wee bit of optimism amongst our fans recently due to our unbeaten run from 22nd November until yesterday, 10th January. The feeling, particularly following our away win at Morton last week, was (and for some, still is) that we can get into the play-offs this year. Will we or won't we? I'm still not sure either way.

So, here's the state of play just now:

We are just seven points away from being in the play-off zone, although the teams above us have games in hand. Time will tell whether or not we make it to the play-offs but a couple of thoughts spring to mind. 

First, positive, is that, below is the league table this time LAST season. We've got double the points we had the equivalent time last year.

My next, negative, point of caveated in that of course I don't think any team in this year's league is unbeatable for us. However, our next three games will test our metal and perhaps give us a picture as to whether or not we should keep the 9th and 16th of May free.  However, if we are to break into that play-off zone we really need to be winning (or at worst, picking up points from) games like the one yesterday. We need to be climbing above the likes of Peterhead, Dunfermline and Brechin. 

Yesterday was a missed opportunity but the rest of January has a few interesting, and perhaps crucial, fixtures.

By the time we got to the end of season 13/14, we were left kicking ourselves that we'd just fallen short of the play-offs for the sake of a few points. I put a lot of that down to having dropped points early in the season. 

Let's not get to the end of this season and conclude that it was dropping those points in January that did it this time.