#swfc This excellent recent question deserves a response:

How have we done against teams above us in seasons past?

Bit of a tweet thread and some graphs flying your way.

tl;dr: You can go up while being as inept as us vs. top 6, but not vs. top 17. https://twitter.com/ianxwiles/status/1198541924111532032

This season we've won just 4 points from 10 matches against teams above 18th in the table, which is a far lower rate than any season since 2012-13:

But can't that be good enough, as long as we beat absolutely everyone from 18th and down this season?

That's 42 points+4 from 10 against top 17 = 46 points.

6th requires on average 74 points. We'd need a minimum of 32 pts in the 24 top 17 matches remaining (1.33 pts per game).

The teams promoted in the last three seasons haven't had anywhere as bad a top 17 record as us, though, which should be food for thought:

If we break it down to how we'd done against top 6, upper midtable, lower midtable and bottom 6 compared to the promoted teams there IS some comfort in knowing you don't have to blow out the top 6 to end up promoted; notice, too, our rate of points isn't far off ours in 2015-16:

Compared to the promoted teams we're still some ways behind, but 2 wins against top 6 would be enough to equal Villa's top 6 record last season for instance:

These two next graphs shows just how lopsided our points haul has been so far this season:

The make or break of our increasingly unlikely top 6 push is likely to be against midtable, 7th to 18th, not top 6.

To reach 74, the average required to finish 6th, #swfc will need 49 from the remaining 29 matches, 1.69 points per game, or:

W 14
D 8
L 7

from here on in.