Points needed for exiting the fourth tier

As promised/threatened on on another thread, here's a look at the targets we need to be setting for next season. Summary in this post; the next one will have all the numbers for those who might be interested. I've looked only at 1981/2 onwards, i.e. the 3-points-for-a-win era.

The points ranges for promotions, playoffs, and relegations tend to be rather broad. I've simplified things by looking for the top-7 and bottom-3 in each season, as that's what we need to worry about in the current set-up of the league.

1st: 82 - 102
2nd: 79 - 97
3rd: 75 - 89 (89 prorated from 42 matches, but 88 in a few 46-match seasons)
4th: 72 - 88
5th: 70 - 84
6th: 69 - 81
7th: 66 - 79
...
3rd from bottom, thus safe: 41-54 (minimum points needed 35 - 52)
2nd bottom: 34 - 51
bottom: 20 - 48

At the bottom end:
- 52 points needs to be the first/fall-back goal, though the very high 40s are usually safe.

At the other end:
- 90+ points usually gets you 1st
- 85+ points gets you into the top 3 (exceptions: 1981/2 and 2007/8)
- 70+ points usually gets you into the playoffs (sometimes high-60s will do)

The highest 7th-place total was 79, in the pre-playoff days, but 78 was needed in 2007/8. So if we want to guarantee a chance at promotion, we should set 78 points as our true minimum target -- 1.695 points-per-match.

Over to you, Gary!

RCB

 

And here's a spreadsheet with all the numbers.



Notes:
- seasons 1991/2 through 1994/5 only had 42 matches, so the points have been prorated to 46-match seasons
- also for these seasons, the bottom 3 places would be 20th, 21st, and 22nd
- and for season 1991/2, Aldershot's record was expunged
- only 2 auto-promotion slots in 1994/5

RCB

 

Indeed a rather good one.

So much depends on the other sides and the overall quality of the division, as the table above shows. Imagine 97 points and only coming second, or drawing the really short straw and getting relegated with 51!

RCB

 

Are we in the real world, or a fantasy one? As one can come up with a scenario where the bottom three sides all have four points -- records of 0-4-34, because each of these sides drew both their matches against the other two. Fourth bottom in this case would have to have 18 points at minimum, as they'd have to have beaten each of the three relegated sides. But this is hardly a real-world scenario!

RCB

 

But the bottom two play each other twice, and so one of them at least must have some points...

RCB