Where To Draw the Line for Premiership Survival.

The expectations of football fans at the start of the season can be broadly split into two camps. Supporters of around half a dozen teams can look forward to a season where the anxiety revolves around title aspirations and UCL or Europa league qualification. Some even organise a flypast to celebrate the latter. The remainder of have-nots can't wait to get to the magical 40 points quick enough and reach the generally accepted threshold for continued membership of the top flight.

The 40 point target usually leaves quite a bit of room for error, the mid to high thirties has generally been sufficient to finish outside the bottom three throughout the history of the 38 game Premiership. Only West Ham (42 points) in 2002/03 have been relegated with more than 40 points, although Everton needed a superior goal difference to go with their two score points to survive in 1997/98 and Sunderland found 40 points insufficient a year earlier.

Each of these seasons were atypical of the current EPL. Everton's near miss-hap and Sunderland's demise came in a period when fewer than 80 points were needed to win the title, so "extra" points filtered down the league and West Ham suffered partly through the generous nature of the other two relegated sides, WBA (26 points) and Sunderland (19 points).

This demonstrates that while historical precedence can give a baseline figure, factors unique to particular seasons also wield some influence.

If the likes of Derby, Coventry and Sheffield Wednesday hadn't embarked on unlikely goal scoring sprees against Bolton in 1997/98, Everton would have suffered relegation on goal difference instead of clinging to their top flight status.

And if WHU had swapped an impressive 3-2 win away at Chelsea for a much more valuable win at lowly Bolton in 2002/03 instead of the narrow 1-0 defeat they actually suffered, the Hammers 42 points would have been sufficient and Bolton would have dropped into the Championship with 41 points.

Therefore, goal difference, an intertwined fixture list (14 of the remaining matches are head to heads between teams currently occupying one of the bottom nine places) and the proximity of the relegation candidates to each other, each add layers of uncertainty to the survival target of the threatened sides. And these effects become more apparent as the season winds to an end.

The case of Crystal Palace illustrates some of these factors. Their run in is tough and two matches away at both Cardiff and Fulham present them with one of their best opportunities to pick up points in their remaining matches. If they do take points from these games they will deny one or more of their pursuers the chance to take maximum points. Additionally they have a superior goal difference and this is likely to be the case after 38 games.

Palace's goal difference under Pulis' 20 matches in charge is -4, compared to -15 in the first 11 matches before his arrival. Even if they only limp to 34 points by May, simulations indicate that they will still have just over a 50% chance of beating the drop.

34 points is not only at the lower end of the points estimate for Palace by the end of the season, (their most likely total is 38 points), but it also gives them a better than even money shot at staying up.

But what about their relegation rivals, Sunderland, currently lying in 19th place with 25 points from 30 games. Palace are an obvious target for Sunderland, but their fixture lists don't cross again this season, although their goal differences are very similar. However, they do play WBA whom are also struggling at the foot of the table, but the Baggies have an easier run in than Palace, as well as a superior goal difference. To complicate matters further, Cardiff also visit the Stadium of Light at the end of April.

If Sunderland reach 34 points, (an over-achievement on current evidence), how will all these intertwined factors play out in terms of their survival chances?

The easiest way to unravel this is to again simulate actual seasons and see how often 34 points sees Sunderland safe compared to others marooned at the foot of the table.

The table above appears to indicate that rather than a single survival line at this late stage of the season, each team has its own individual target. The chances of enough teams emerging from the bottom of the pack to relegate Palace if they end the campaign with just 34 points is around 53%.

In contrast, the likelihood that Sunderland will find enough sides to catch should they gain 34 points in a multitude of different iterations of the remaining 64 matches is only 30%. Cardiff, especially with their poor goal difference, need a near superhuman 36 points before they are more likely than not to remain in the top flight, as most of the birds will have flown to a slightly higher perch.

The playing field is level in August, but by May the really struggling teams appear to be required to clear a slightly higher bar just to give themselves a similar shot at surviving the drop.

*although Fulham aren't on the (slightly cluttered) plot, they are of course included in the simulations. Their potential fate is slightly worse than that projected for Cardiff.

The Premiership Logjams.

Over the last couple of posts, I've been looking at various ways to express the current league and points positions of the Premiership sides in such a way that the proximity and quantity of challengers is partly captured.

The 2013/14 table appears intent on tearing itself in two, with sides contending in historically high numbers to either win the title or escape relegation on the final weekend of the season. I've used standard scores, which tell you how close to the mean performance a team is as measured in the currency of the standard deviation of that particular performance measurement for the league as a whole.

Currently Arsenal have gained 2.29 points per game in a year where the average is a fairly typical 1.39 ppg with a standard deviation of 0.54 ppg. So they are 1.66 standard deviations away from the current league mean that represents major success for the majority or abject failure for the entitled few.

In 19 seasons of 38 match Premiership action Arsenal rank 15th in a table of standard scores of sides that led the table through 21 matches. So the current leaders are far from dominant in historical terms, 14 leaders were further from their league's points per game mean than Arsenal currently are in the 2013/14 iteration. So you would expect the challengers to be fairly close on their heels and that is the case.

At the foot of the table, Pulis' Palace have slipped to the bottom of the pile prior to a reunion with his former side, Stoke. However, the cast of sides genuinely attempting to claim mid table security is traditionally very crowded and this time around just 6 points separate Palace from Hull in tenth. A standard score of one standard deviation below the mean makes Palace the most impressive bottom placed team after 21 games in the history of the 38 game EPL.

In the table above I've ranked the current EPL teams in terms of their current standard scores compared to the historical dominance of the sides that occupied their league position after a similar number of matches during the preceding 18 seasons. I've flipped the y axis so that height denotes dominance in the rankings.

The sides occupying the safe haven of midtable are currently the least dominant crop for their position in EPL history. It really is a case of looking over their shoulders at the towering cluster of statistically very similar sides that occupy positions in the drop zone.

A similar scenario exists for Arsenal, the points gathering achievements of the teams directly below them, coupled with the Gunners' proximity to midtable should herald a competitive final four months at both ends of the table.

Avoiding The Drop.

The January transfer window affords a team a final chance to add to their squads to try to achieve their aims at either end of the table. Historical precedence based on current league position, points already accrued and the often ignored proximity and quantity of immediate rivals can give a decent baseline probability of a side avoiding the drop or securing a European or title winning finishing position.

In this guest post I follow up a recent look at the top of the Premiership, by seeing how the current crop of struggling sides might fare over the rest of the campaign.

The Premiership Relegation Run In.

Teams in the bottom half of the Premiership have reached the nervous thirties and with 18th placed Wigan a game behind, potentially we could see a logjam of sides separated by just four points. In this guest post I look at how struggling sides perform on average during the final run in and more importantly for those currently in the apparently safe mid table positions, the extremes of performance that relegation threatened teams can muster over a limited number of games.

The Premiership Fight for Survival.

On of the joys of supporting a Premiership team from outside of the top half dozen is the prospect of sooner or later being involved in a relegation battle.Football should be dramatic and memorable and if your team isn't up to providing the excitement whilst winning silverware then the only other option is to be scrapping for their lives in early May.This year's basement contest has seen perennial strugglers Wigan string together a phenomenal late season burst to counter their winless midterm run and they are now long odds to fall into the Championship,while surprise package Villa had enough early points to also stumble over the line.

With Wolves already gone and Blackburn accounting for little more than one percent of the survival market,the final drop spot is between Bolton and QPR and the final day rollercoaster ride came a week early on Sunday,as first Bolton and then QPR appeared to be in prime position to avoid demotion.

  The penultimate weekend saw QPR and Bolton facing very similar challenges with home games against Stoke and managerless WBA respectively.The R's final weekend match away at Champions elect Man City is partly counterbalanced by their vastly superior goal difference and Bolton travel to the Potteries to face a Stoke side who can be notoriously generous towards needy causes.

On Sunday,Bolton split the deadlock both at the Reebok and in their head to head with QPR by taking the lead over WBA and their chances of survival climbed to over 60%.Both games saw no further goals until Bolton doubled their lead in the 72nd minute,but their two goal advantage was quickly reduced by Brunt's strike 4 minutes later.However,time was now as much a factor as the size of Bolton's lead and as each game entered the final minutes,their chances of survival was in the region of 90%,while QPR's languished at barely 10%.

Everything changed as Cisse's 89th minute game breaker against Stoke saw Rangers' survival odds rocket to just below 50% and Bolton's in turn plummet downwards to meet it.But worse was to follow for the Trotters as they then fell to a late WBA equaliser and after a day that had promised much they enter the final week with barely a 25% chance of playing Premiership football in 2012/13.