From the very start of this campaign I have been advocating the need to average at least two points per game, thats still the case, but to do this we have to win possibly four on the road.
Of course predicting where a football team will finish and the number of points it will need to achieve its specific aim is not an exact science, in fact in many cases it doesnt actually become that exact science to the very last game of the season when a team finds itself needing a win or draw and even then its not exact to the final whistle has blown, so all we can do in the meantime is speculate and predict.
The trick though to be as accurate as possible is to assume a fairly high target rather than a lower number of points and as each set of games goes by the true figure needed becomes clearer, around this time last year I started to do this regularly and from a supporters point of view it does help in measuring just how near or far your team are from success, managers often use this themselves to keep players motivated and their eyes on the ball so to speak, especially in the deep winter months when the end of the season seems so far away.
With 14 games to go if Saints hit that two point average then they will hit 87 points and that should be enough for a top two spot although a look back at last years League 1 table shows Huddersfield on 87 points, in the Championship QPR won it on 88 with Norwich on 84, a look back over the last few years shows that 87 points would normally be enough for automatic promotion, although not quite in every season.
So if we are to achieve our aim lets see what we need to do.
We have six home games left and eight away, if we maintain our home average for the season (2.56) then we will get 15 points from those remaining games, thats a tough ask it means we need to win five and lose only one, but thats our average so lets run with that, this means that away from home we have to get 13 points from 8 games, to be blunt that means that we have to win at least four of them, draw two and lose two, if we compare our away point average of only 0.80 per game then this would only give us six points and leave us well short of our target.
Most teams that have got automatic promotion in the recent past have won eight on the road, it looks like we will have to be no different, even if we won every home game, we would still need to get ten on the road minimum, but we cant assume we will win every home game, in fact in some ways it would be prudent to assume that we might slip up in two of those six perhaps drawing and losing one, in which case we could be looking for as many as fifteen points on our travels, whatever way we look at things we are now paying the price for our failure to win on the road at some of the lowly teams.
Our eight away fixtures fall into three categories, winnable, unpredictable and hard.
In the winnable category we would have three games, Saturday's trip to Watford, plus the games at Millwall and Peterborough, unpredictable would be Palace & Leeds and that then leaves three toughies, Hull, Blackpool & Middlesbrough.
These games show just how difficult our task is going to be, the first key will be to no slip up in the winnable games, we have to win at Watford on Saturday, any other result will leave us with a mountain to climb, we need to get wins on the road under our belt and fast, follow a win at Vicarage road up with one at Leeds and we are ahead in the game, make it three in a row at Millwall and that would line us up nicely for a visit to Hull for what is going to be a real toughie.
The games are going to be coming thick and fast now and these next three away fixtures are crucial, we have to win two of them at least.
We have no room for error now, we blew a great chance to cruise to promotion, by more luck than anything else we find ourselves still up there, we now have to be clinical, in many respects its very similar to last season, but make no mistake going to Exeter, Dagenham, Orient and Brentford is a lot lot easiier than what we face now.
So there we have what we need to do down in black and white, of course it will change as the season starts to reach its climax, but if we put the points on the table sooner than later then it will start to sap the moarale of our rivals.