Quote Originally Posted by Rjk View Post
Having a look at the average points a team in 17th gets, and 38 was the average for the last 10 seasons. The highest being 40 and lowest 35.

So we really want to be averaging a point a game over the course of the season.
We are averaging well below that at the moment (0.73), and aren't in the relegation spots - however, history tells us, that at some point, some of the sides down there will start to pick up points more quickly if it is going to end up similarly to any of the last 10 seasons. Hopefully it can be us!

points per game.jpg

Heres a graph I've just made showing our points per game this season (blue line) as it progresses
Compared with the points per game for the 2013/14 season where we finished rock bottom on 35 points.
The horizontal lines are where we want to be above at the end of the season if we want to be in with a good chance of staying up.

In 2013 you can see our strong start, then us gradually declining until we brought in Ole and hastened the decline.
We've had a pretty bad start in comparison, but are now only 3 points behind where we were last time, hopefully we pass that soon and stay well above it.
Good work. I'll make a suggestion that 1 point above 18th is a more accurate measurement of survival than points won by the team finishing 17th, which gives an average of around 36.5 points.

There have been 4 occasions since the Premier League was reduced to 20 teams where 40+ points meant survival. It's been 34 points on 9 occasions and only once has it been lower.

One interesting stat (possibly) is that there's little correlation between the number of teams averaging less than a point a game at this point in the season and averaging less than a point a game at the end of the season. More often than not, there are more teams averaging less than a point a game now than at the end, yet that's not always the case. Unless Newcastle win at Everton, we're looking at a record number of teams at this stage of the season averaging less than a point a game. However, it seems that whenever there's a larger number of teams averaging less than a point a game at this stage, more teams turn that around over the remainder of the season. It suggests some teams that are currently struggling will find more form. If we're not one of them we are likely to be cut adrift.