Will We Stay Up?
Friday, 30th Dec 2016 15:30 by Planet Swans (follow us on Twitter @swansnews)

We know that no matter who the manager is that the Swans appoint to replace Bob Bradley they have a huge task in front of them to keep the Swans in the Premier League for a 7th season with the side sitting currently at just 12 points from their 18 games to date.

The season will reach it's halfway stage against Bournemouth tomorrow at the Liberty with us desperately searching for a win that will take us into the second half of the season at least with a small amount of momentum behind us.

The good news is that we are only currently four points away from the current tally of the side in 17th place so we definitely are not out of the running to stay up but there is much work to be done between here and May whoever takes the job at the top.

And if we are to stay up then you would have to assume that fixtures such as Bournemouth at home are games that we have to win especially as we cannot really afford for that gap between us and safety to increase any more.

And it will almost certainly be our home form that dictates whether we stay up or not as we have a series of fixtures at the Liberty that look like games where we should be targeting a maximum return with the likes of Burnley, Stoke, West Brom and Middlesbrough all due to visit us between now and the season end.

Away fixtures against the likes of Chelsea, Man Utd, Liverpool and Man City dictate just how tough it will be on the road for us and anything we pick up from these kind of games will just be a bonus.

For a bit of fun we have looked at our remaining fixtures and tried to predict those that we will win, lose and draw and the bad news is that if we are right the total only comes to 37 points - short of the 40 that is widely banded about as the tally needed to stave off relegation.

As you can see from the image above there are plenty of additional points to play for - certainly with the 7 games we have predicted to be draws - turn a couple of those into wins and then the 40 points looks very achievable.

What it does tell you though is that to stay up we need to be displaying Top 10 form from here on in if we want to retain our Premier League status and that will be the challenge that awaits the new man when the club make an appointment.