A few comments this morning suggest that having this game in hand is undesirable as it means us having 2 games in a week when everyone else has an easier time of things. I remember looking at this once in one of Dave Jones' seasons in charge and we actually won more points when the games came thick and fast than when we had longer gaps between them, so I thought I'd have a look and see how we've done this season.

Taking league games only into account, our record when we've had a midweek game that follows a weekend fixture, or weekend game that follows a midweek game, we've won 2.08 points a game on average (winning 15 and drawing 3 of the 23 occasions this has happened). Our record when we've had a week between games is marginally better, winning 2.13 points a game on average (winning 5 and drawing 2 of the 8 occasions this has happened). More worryingly, our record when there's been longer than a week to wait between games, we've only won 1.6 points a game on average (winning and drawing 2 of the 5 occasions this has happened). (Yes, 23+8+5=36, but we didn't play anyone this season before Burton in a league game).

However, this is not necessarily an accurate picture. It doesn't take into account teams played. Of the 8 times we played teams after roughly a week's gap, only Millwall and Middlesbrough were in the top half. We faced Sunderland twice, Hull City, Leeds, Bolton, Forest as well. Our five games that took place after more than a week were against Barnsley, Reading, Birmingham, Brentford and Fulham, at times when all were in the bottom half.

There's also another skew to the stats. The Christmas period was one where we lost the plot and played our worst football of the season. I don't believe any of that was down to the number of fixures we played - there have been two other occasions when we've played 4 successive games in a similar timescale and on both occasions we won every game. Take the Christmas defeats out of the equation and we'll have won 2.4 points a game when they've come thick and fast.

In short, I don't think it's any sort of disadvantage playing games midweek and at weekends instead of having a gap of a week between them. If anything, it provides some continuity.