The valley view

By Hermann Hreidarsson on April 3, 2007 12:00 AM |

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I'VE never been much of a facts and figures man, but what's been happening at The Valley recently has almost goaded me into doing a bit of research.
I'm sure a lot of supporters will have been aware of it, but our most recent win against our relegation rivals Wigan Athletic on Saturday was the first time we have secured back-to-back Premiership victories since September 2005. Amazing.
I'm always quite interested in the bookmakers' odds about things as well, and I know that in the middle of January we were as short as 1/8 to be relegated, compared to 4/6 to suffer the drop now.

It just goes to show what we have achieved in the last two months or so and when you look back at the situation we were in before Christmas it really is quite astonishing.
We never lost the faith that we could pull ourselves out of danger, even when we were some 10 points adrift of safety.
But that's not to say that when you actually get on the verge of achieving the miracle escape you wonder quite how you've done it.
The three points against Wigan mean that now, unbelievably, we are only a single point short of safety and the healthy goal tally we have managed recently means that if we can get a point at Manchester City on Good Friday we will move out of the relegation zone for the first time since September.
I know it was the gaffer's aim to have our destiny in our own hands as soon as possible and now that we are only one point behind Sheffield United, a team we still have to play at The Valley, we know that survival is down to us. Apart from Andy Reid, we have a virtually fully fit squad, and the feeling persists that we just need to ensure complacency doesn't set in and that we maintain our intensity.
We've done fantastically well to get ourselves where we are now in such a short space of time, but we need to realise the job is only half done.
There are still seven games to go, which is plenty of points not just for us but for all the teams around us, and it's going to be about who can really dig deep and keep it going until the end.
As far as the Wigan game itself is concerned, it wasn't the prettiest, but what a result. They made it very tough for us to play the kind of football we have been playing at home recently, but we hung in there and battled with them and eventually got our result thanks to Darren Bent's courageous penalty.
I was actually in the mix that led to the penalty and I felt I was bundled over before Marcus Bent was fouled - maybe the referee gave it for two half-fouls!
We face a busy Easter period now with Manchester City on Friday and then Reading on Easter Monday night, and we feel as though we can get results from both games.
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