 Wednesday, 21st Aug 2013 10:10 Following on from my earlier article that pointed out the need for a good start and to set realistic targets, here we set out a benchmark for the seasn. Some say that the Premier League is four leagues in one, there is a case for that, certainly last year there were four distinct sections, 1. The top five This season I expect it to be fairly similar although in terms of setting benchmarks in terms of points per game I think we need to keep it a lot simpler than that, especially in the early days when its not quite clear who is having a decent season and who isn't. This being the case I suggest that the League in terms of competiveness is in two sections, the top six, Man Utd, Man City, Chelsea, Arsenal, Spurs & Liverpool, some may argue, but I see this as being the top six with Everton perhaps dropping a place or two after the departure of Moyes, although I think that perhaps the three promoted clubs will be cast adrift ultimately I will include them in what is effectively the rest of the league in terms of setting points per game targets. Ultimately our first aim is to survive again this season and our second to start to improve on our 14th place finish last with our 3rd target a top ten finish, all three are achievable and realistic, personally I think that 7th is about our maximum and certainly I cant see us breaking into the top 6, to make 5th place and a Europa League spot would mean a 31 point improvement on last season and I feel that this is just two big a jump in one go. So how should we be looking at the season with regard to points per game ratio, firstly you cant just do it as simply dividing the target points by 38 games, the games against the top six will yield far less points than the average against the rest of the league, last season we earned 9 points against my stated top six for this year from the 12 games we played, that's a 0.75 per game ratio and I think that's realistic, but more of that later. Our first target should be to hit a points per game average against those teams in the bottom 14, if we say we should be looking for a 1.5 average per game here, that would mean 39 points over the season, that in itself should guarantee survival, what will take us on to the next level though will be achieving that 0.75 against the top six. If we had hit these targets last season then we would have had 48 points and 9th position, what it also tells us is that what made us struggle wasn't the games against the top six, but our failure to beat the other sides out of those 26 games we only managed 32 points, 1.23 points per game to be exact. So when judging how our season is going I don't take it across the board, I look at who we are playing, last seasons opening four games saw three top six sides in the mix, we should have had 3.75 points in total, we had 0 so the inference was clear, of cource there will be fractions on this formula, but it still gives you a clear view of how ahead of the game we are. So if you take our opening four games this season, after we have completed them, to be on target we need to be on six points as all are against the "other" sides so 1.5 per game. Taking a longer term view at Christmas we will have played 17 games after the visit of Spurs on 21st December, assuming no postponements etc, so what would be a realistic points total to aim for. Well in that 17 games there are 6 games against the top six, so its a little top heavy, so in my formula we should have 11 games at 1.5 and 6 at .75, so after 17 games we should be on 21 points. Using this ratio makes it fairly easy to monitor our progress and also take into account periods where you are top heavy with top six sides, for instance late November/December sees us play four of the top six in a six game period, so a six point haul although in plain points per game ratio is basically relegation form, actually balanced out its a good total. Football being football though there will always be blips, but over a season its easy to plot as well as see where we are going wrong or going right, in simple terms though, keep that 1,5 average up against the"other" sides and we stay up, increase that average by a little and we start to look towards the top 10. Ok for some of you this mathematical stuff isn't for you and you just want to watch football, but all teams lose games and this tells you whether overall you are having a good or bad season. Photo: Action Images Please report offensive, libellous or inappropriate posts by using the links provided.
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