Newcastle & relegation, statistically speaking!

To say that Newcastle find themselves in a perilous position after 26 games of the season would be an understatement.

Sitting third bottom of the table on 24 points – we could conceivably be second bottom by the time we play again – is undoubtedly not where the vast majority of fans, pundits or management team expected us to be, but ultimately, the table does not lie.

Six league wins all season, and only nine wins since the start 0f 2015 tells its own story.

We simply cannot see this season out with a similar win-loss ratio as we’ve had during that period and expect to stay up. We need an upturn in results, and we need it to start at Stoke on Tuesday.

So what do the stats and figures say?

I looked through the Premier League tables as far back as the 1995/96 season, which was the first season that the Premier League had just 20 teams.

If we look at the point totals for the teams occupying the bottom three places in the Premier League after 26 games, they show that the average tallies are 22.5 pts for 18th; 21.7 pts for 19th; and 18 pts for 20th. Therefore, this season shows that Newcastle in 18th and Sunderland in 19th are above average, but poor Aston Villa (unsurprisingly) are below average. So for the glass-half-full fans among us, this is good news.

However, out of the 57 teams that have been relegated in that period, 42 that were in the bottom three at this stage of the season went down. That equates to a whopping 73.7%. Suddenly that glass doesn’t look quite as full anymore.

The statistics also show that of the same 57 teams, a mere 20 of them had a points tally of Newcastle’s current 24 or greater after 26 games, that is 35.1%, so put another tick in the positive list.

In those 19 years, the largest number of points gained by a team finishing 18th was 42 when West Ham United were relegated in the 2002/03 season, and the fewest was 30 points by Burnley in 2009/10. The average number of points for the third from bottom team over that period is 37.68, and no team would have been relegated with 40 points or more since the aforementioned 2002/03 campaign.

So, with both Newcastle and Sunderland currently having above-average points tallies, let’s assume that for this season 40 points will be needed to stay up, meaning Newcastle will need to find another 16 points between now and the 15th May.

I have looked at our fixtures, and tried to be as realistic as possible, based on our performances at home and away previously, and I have us (ironically) reaching exactly 40 points, with home wins against Bournemouth, Sunderland, Swansea and Crystal Palace; an away victory at Aston Villa; and a draw at Carrow Road against Norwich.

Of course, we can prophesize, guess, number crunch, or even use a psychic octopus, but football being the predictably unpredictable sport that it is, there will be unforeseen, head-scratching, seemingly bizarre results for all teams over the coming weeks, and as such, until we see a league table that has us mathematically safe, or categorically down, as typical Newcastle fans, we will go into every game hoping for the best, but expecting the worst.

Finally, for the super-optimists among us, in that first season with a 20-team Premier League in 1995/96, Newcastle finished second on 78 points, while Manchester City were relegated in 18th with just 38 points, and it didn’t turn out too badly for them in the long run!

There is always hope!