Is promotion still a realistic goal for Fulham?

To analyze this, I went back through every season since Fulham was last in the Championship. That's fourteen years worth of data. I found the point total for the team in sixth place, the point total of the playoff winner, and the point totals for the two automatically promoted sides. It's laid out in this table.

Looking at the data, things are not as dire as one might expect. Fulham are currently sitting on only fourteen points. However, there are still 32 matches to play. More importantly, since Kit Symons has taken over, Fulham have earned 1.86 points per game. If Fulham were to continue that pace, you would expect a final season total of 73 points. How does that look historically?

What exactly does that all mean? The average team promoted from the Championship finished with 86 points. To avoid a few outliers throwing off the average, I also included the Median and Mode, but neither changes the analysis much. To get into that average group Fulham would need to average 2.25 points per game from here on out. That would be a tough ask. A team playing like that over 46 games would end up better than Fulham's 2000/01 season where they managed 101 points. Getting into second place is just as tall of an order. It takes on average 87 points to get into second. However, two times in fourteen years 79 points has been enough to secure second place. While it isn't impossible for Fulham to get into second, they're going to require the teams above them to falter. Right now, 85 points is the pace of the second place teams.

So achieving automatic promotion is a tall order. Does that mean all hope is lost? Not at all. The average point total for the sixth place team is only 73 points. If Fulham perform exactly as they have under Kit for the rest of the year, that's exactly the total they would hit. Right now the pace for sixth is 78 points, however in the last 14 years no team finishing sixth has ever had more than 75 points. The sixth place team has finished with as little as 68 points. Sixth place is a realistic goal for Fulham. If the team don't fall off Kit's pace, they will challenge for it. If they improve they could even finish in a higher playoff position.

You may be saying to yourself, so what if they finish sixth. That just means they make the playoffs and they'll have a hard time getting out. This is true to a certain extent. The playoffs are a bit of a crapshoot. But at worst you'd expect a 25% chance of getting promoted from them. Those aren't long odds. That's the same as flipping a coin twice and getting heads both times. I wouldn't bet my life on it happening, but I wouldn't bet my life against it happening either.

You can see that the median, mode, and average league position of the playoff winner is all over the place. The sixth place team has won three times, the fifth place four times, the fourth pace once, and the third place team six. It may look like the third place team has a huge advantage, but I don't think in this small of a sample we can make that judgement. I'd guess the odds for each team making it out are fairly similar.

So what does this all mean? As bad as the season started, there's still hope for premier league football next year. Just keeping the team on their pace over the last 7 games, might be enough to get them into the playoffs. Once there, you're two coin flips away from going back up. A win at home against Wigan improves things even more. Keep up the 1.86 PPG pace after that, and you're expected point total climbs to 74. Any time Fulham win at home or draw on the road they're improving their odds. So that means there's still a lot to root for.