My travel pattern changed, and so I dropped from Gold to Silver and am due to drop to Bronze soon. My membership year ends September 8, my card is valid until October 31.

As far as I see it, I have two options:

a) Requalify for Silver by September 8.
That would make me Silver until September 8, 2014.

However, since I am a long way from requalifying, I am considering whether it's worth intentionally missing that threshold in order to

b) Wait until after September 8, when my TP are reset to 0.
Earn 600(or more) TP between September 8 and October 31.
That would give me
- All Silver benefits (additional Avios) in the meantime, while my card is still valid
- Silver Status from [whenever I hit the 600 TP] until September 8, 2015 as it would be valid for both the year that I qualified, as well as the following membership year?

Is this correct?

Or would I have to wait until after my card expiration and only qualify for Silver after October 31st in order to get more than one year of Silver benefits?
For example:

c) Earn 590 TP between September 8 and October 31 (in order to get the most avios from my flights)
Become a full "Bronze Member" from November 1
Earn another 10 TP to move back to Silver, valid for the (then) current membership year + the following year (until September / October 2015)?

Thanks