We would be battling with Cardiff to stay up I would think. Even though they are going down, the fact they don't have a stellar squad on paper and would have stayed up but for dodgy decisions should give us hope next season.
Cardiff are going down because they aren’t good enough. They’ve been subject to a few bad decisions, like a lot of the teams outside the top 5 have. They’ve put more of a fight up that Huddersfield, with a similar quality squad. But they are marginally not good enough, and that is due to the lack of a goalscorer. You could argue that team spirit, keeping the same manager, consistency of instruction and crowd atmosphere is worth 10 points.
If you look at the stats, the lowest four scorers occupy the bottom four places; Huddersfield (20), Cardiff (30), Brighton (33) and Fulham (34) and the three highest conceders occupy the bottom three places; Fulham (76), Huddersfield (74) and Cardiff (66).
Newcastle are the only other club to have scored less than 40 goals, with 36. But what’s kept them out of danger is that they’ve got the 7th best defensive record in the league.
Southampton are another good marker, having scored 44 and conceded 61, and look to have survived.
Although repeating the point Akinbiyi made, when you look at the squads of Fulham and say, Burnley on paper, Fulham are obviously better, but 14 points inferior. So you could argue that team spirit, keeping the same manager, consistency of instruction and crowd atmosphere are worth 14 points.
Looking forward if you strip away the woo-woo, for us to stay up, this season’s stats suggest that, from now until the start of next season, we have to put together a team that can score at least 40 goals and concede no more than 60.
40 goals would usually need the input of two forwards on 10 or 11 goals, another on 5, a midfielder on 5, with the rest spread out singularly or in pairs around a handful of players. Or one main forward on 15, with support from two rotating partners on about 5 to 7 each, with the rest being spread about the team. When you look at the current squad, I think we are short of those players scoring those numbers in the prem. So theoretically, I think this season’s squad would’ve been bottom 5, but not bottom 2.
