Home form.

"What home results under Pearson actually highlight is the specific reason we failed to achieve auto promotion.
We only actually won 55% of our home games..."

To be pedantic, it would be rounded up to 57% for season - 2009/10.

But in any case, this isn't the specific reason. Even if we had equalled the home form of Newcastle that season and gained 18 wins, we will still would have fallen short of the points total required for automatic promotion.

I would think it to be too difficult to pin point an exact reason, but it could be argued that a large percentage of the reason we didn't gain automatic promotion was because two teams; in Newcastle and West Brom had pretty exceptional records at home and away - there were simply just two teams who were alot better than anyone else.

I believe on average, the teams who gain automatic promotion, achieve a win rate at home of around 60% give or take.

John you mention that our home form was affected by long ball tactics, however when we attempted to play possession football last season, we achieved an identicial record at home.

Auto promotion over the last decade has required a points total of around 86pts for anyone interested.

"I seem to recall that under Pearson, we tended to defeat the teams who came and parked the bus, but couldn't get into the likes of West Brom, who just looked better than us"

Possibly true Dung, but to be fair to be Pearson, other than West Brom, we did very well against the better teams in the division at home -

Beat Swansea
Beat Blackpool
Beat Cardiff
Beat Forest

Drew against Newcastle, arguably should have won and outplayed them with 10 men.

I think our main weakness was that we were unable to generally play well and win those 6 pointers away from home (although there should be notable mention for a good display and win at Blackpool after how many years? And the superb display at, then, in-form QPR)

I tend to believe that strong home form keeps you in a division, while strong away form gets you promoted.

I certainly think the difference between automatic and play offs is grinding out wins away from home.

Forest may have nicked second that year if they weren't so abysmal at dong this.

I like the idea of Forest being "abysmal at dong".

ON the target board of every aspiring top six club is the graph showing 2 points a game average- This gives you automatic promotion and actual performance is plotted against this straight line climb plot from zero to 92.

The target can be reached by winning all home and drawing all away..... life should b e so simple .. but what is clear is that when you lose at home or only draw -you MUST recover lost target on an away game.

This was the death knell for Eriksson - he was 14 point already adrift with the need to recover 12 points on away fixtures. Susan may not be a football expert but she could read the graph!!

I think the list of teams who had achieved the magic '92 points' for automatic promotion would be quite short. In reality, I think around 85 points is the total needed to be in with a decent shout of auto's.

The key to promotion for me is consistency both home and away and being able to perform at 80/90% 9 times out of 10. If you look at Sven's tenure, in the first season we were able to get good results and dispatch most of the lower teams quite comfortably but when we played the better teams, we couldn't rise to the challenge.

This season, the opposite was true and we couldn't beat teams who, on paper, we should. So to get that consistency both home and away is the only way to get promotion.

For me, the style of football is secondary to results and I think this would be true for most fans if they were being honest. For instance, if we were to get promoted playing long ball football, I don't think there would be too many complaining. Personally, I prefer to watch passing football but if my beloved club get promotion playing a more direct style, I'll be happy. I think there's an argument that one of Sven's side's biggest failings was that we were unwilling to be a bit more direct when the situation required.

As it is, I don't think Pearson will play long ball because he doesn't have the players to do it. This squad is more suited to possession football and I think he'll have noted that and play accordingly. Also, he played passing football at Hull so maybe there's also been a change in Nigel's philosophy?

KTF It is no coincidence that the 5 teams you mention where we did well at home are the very teams who came to attack us -which is open to the long ball run into channel counter- interesting when Cardiff came in the two leg play off they adopted defensive structure and they beat us with sole goal.
You must have the ability to keep the ball from the back and have ability to take on defenders when they "park the bua" -not Pearson's type of player

But we also beat plenty of teams (certainly more than those who came to attack) at home who played 4-5-1 and countered?