I thought I'd have a look at our playoff chances given the last 10 years of stats in the Championship (cue nearly everyone moving on from this thread).

Firstly, let's try and predict the number of points needed this season.

The average points required for 6th place has been roughly 75.
The average number of points gained by 6th place after 34 games and at the end of the season is 19 points. Currently, the team in 6th has 56 points. 56 + 19 = 75. This was the case in 2011/12 when we finished in 6th on 75 points. After 34 games, the team in 6th had 56 points. This points difference has varied; it's been as much as 22 points once and an unusual low of 13 points once, but for calculation purposes, let's say 75 points will be needed to finish in the top 6.

What does that mean for us? We're on 50 points at the moment. That means winning another 25 points from our last 12 games. That's 7 wins, 4 draws and a defeat or 8 wins, 1 draw and 3 defeats. 25 points from 12 games is an average of 2.08 points a game, so we'd need to show better form than we did overall in our 2017/18 promotion season. That's up to the individual to consider whether that's likely. My feeling is that we have no chance.

Over the last 10 seasons, only 5 sides from outside the playoff positions have gone on to claim a top 6 spot. Quite often I hear that there's always one team that comes from nowhere, something I believed to be true. It's clearly not as regular an occurrance as I thought.

Only 1 team in the last decade has been in 10th place at this point in the season and finished in the playoffs. That was Reading, our playoff conquerors in 2011. They had 48 points at this stage in the season and picked up an incredible 29 points from the last 36.

Fulham in 2016/17 managed 27 points from their last 12 games and leapt from a position outside the playoffs to a position inside, though they were in 7th and ended up finishing 3rd. Those are the only two occurrances in a decade of teams winning 25 points or more to go from outside the top 6 to inside (what we need to do).

Blackpool and Brighton came from 9th and 8th respectively to finish in the top 6 but in both seasons the points gained by the team in 6th at both the 34 and 46 point mark were low. Blackpool managed 23 points in 2009/10, which would be unlikely to be enough this season.

In short, we would need to achieve something that happens much more rarely than some of us might think.

Let's play the optimist role and look at how we might get 25 points.

Given our position as draw specialists, 7 wins, 4 draws and a defeat sounds more plausible than 8 wins. There's an interesting table on soccerstats.com showing the points per game averages of teams we've played and teams we've yet to face. This is its current calculations on our run-in:

(H) vs Nottm Forest (PPG away = 1.65)
(H) vs Brentford (PPG away = 1.41)
(A) at Barnsley (PPG at home = 1.22)
(H) vs Leeds Utd (PPG away = 1.65)
(A) at Preston (PPG at home = 2.00)
(H) vs Charlton (PPG away = 0.81)
(A) at Bristol City (PPG at home = 1.47)
(H) vs Blackburn (PPG away = 1.24)
(A) at Fulham (PPG at home = 1.88)
(H) vs Derby County (PPG away = 0.69)
(A) at Middlesbrough (PPG at home = 1.47)
(H) vs Hull City (PPG away = 1.18)

It suggests Forest, Brentford, Leeds, Preston, Fulham, Bristol City and Middlesbrough are going to be tough matches. Can we win the remaining other 6? Given our failings against sides like Stoke, Wigan, Charlton, Reading and Millwall, you'd have to doubt this very much. More to the point can we avoid defeat to Forest, Brentford, Leeds, Preston, Fulham, Bristol City and Boro? I doubt it. You'd have to be the eternal optimist to think so.

We play 7 sides above us in the last 12, where we've won 1 of those 7 games played against those sides earlier in the season.

At the end of the day to finish in the playoffs we need to get better results than when we won promotion 2 years ago, produce a run of form only seen twice in a decade by teams from outside the top 6 and at least triple our win rate against teams above us in the table while not losing to them. Fiver on that, anyone?