The stats that down Premier

NEIL Warnock wants to make history at Cardiff City by gaining a record eighth promotion – and history is on his side.

Because, going back over the last 15 seasons, no-one has gained as many points as the Bluebirds at this stage of the season and not gone up automatically.

Veteran Warnock knows what it takes to guide a team to the next division with no manager having achieved it more times in their careers than the Yorkshireman.

So, while he’ll want to still play his side’s chances down and warn of the pitfalls, even he has to accept that Cardiff are in a superb position if they are to realise Premier League dreams.

With almost half the campaign gone, Cardiff are currently second on an impressive 43 points from 20 games. Going back to the 2002/2003 Championship season, only five sides managed more points from the same number of fixtures – and all ended the season in the top two.

It is the points total that gives a greater indicator of eventual success – and reason for hope – than the position in the automatic promotion places at this stage of the season.

Still, out of the 30 teams in the top two over those most-recent 15 seasons, 18 of them – or 60% – were still there when it mattered in May.

However, there are four examples of sides going from the top two after 20 games to failing to finish in the top six, with a couple close enough to home to remind that nothing’s a given in football.

Cardiff were second in 2006/07 after 20 games only to finish in 13th, while Warnock was boss at Sheffield United when they went from second in 2003/04 at the same stage and ended up in eighth.

It is why points are a better clue as to how Cardiff’s current status stands up to past success stories in the second tier.

With three games to go until the Boxing Day game with Bolton that marks the start of the second-half of the season, getting past 40 points – and averaging more than two points a game to do so – is some going already.

Since 2002/03, only 20 teams have managed to get to the 40-point mark – something that took the Bluebirds until Valentine’s Day to achieve last season – with 20 games gone. Of those, 16 (80%) went up automatically.

Most pertinently, given that a topsix finish would have definitely been seen as a success before a ball was kicked this year, no side in 15 years has been on 40 points or more at this stage and not made the playoffs.

Furthermore, only once has a team hit those 40 points and not gone up either automatically or via the play-offs – Brighton the unlucky outlier when they had 42 points after 20 games in 2015/16 only to miss out on automatic promotion to Middlesbrough on goal difference and then lose to Sheffield Wednesday in the semi-finals.

There are, of course, plenty of examples of bolters, the later runners that come from nowhere to win a place in the Premier League.

With 20 games gone, Burnley were fifth on 35 points and ended up champions with 93 points in 2015/16. Sunderland were 14th on 27 points in 2006/07 and went on to finish top with 88 points.

Back in 2011/12, Reading were 11th on 27 points and lifted the old trophy with 89 points come May.

But falls from the top are rarer, especially when the pace-setters are as on as many points at this stage as they are now.

Between them, Cardiff and leaders Wolves – four points ahead of the Bluebirds on 47) have shown 20-game form that is well above average when compared to the previous 15 seasons studied.

Indeed, only once has the top two at this stage earned more points than the 90 garnered by Warnock’s men and the side from Molineux, coming back in 2005/06.

The well-travelled boss, who turned 69 last week, was on his way to his sixth-career promotion with Sheffield United when the Blades and leaders Reading amassed 93 points between them at the 20-game mark.

Of course, it is not a race to a points tally (though a 15-year averages shows second place as 87 points and third as 82 points, suggesting 85 points as a target for automatic promotion).

Instead, it is about staying ahead of rivals – and it was with interest when Warnock talked of him paying more attention to the gap to the side in seventh, outside the play-offs, than the gap to the leaders or even the team in third.

Again, it goes back to Warnock’s perfectly-justified claim that finishing in the top six, given the rebuilding and budgets compared to rivals, would represent Cardiff doing “remarkably well”.

The Yorkshireman even admitted that “a half-decent second-half of the season” would earn a place in that shoot-out for the Premier League.

He will have noted, then, that the current gap to Ipswich in seventh is 11 points.

What should confirm the opportunity in front of Warnock’s side is that only once in 15 years has that gap been bigger at the same stage – again back in 2005/06 when his second-placed Blades were an impressive 17 points ahead of the chasing pack.

Newcastle and Brighton last year, and Wolves and Birmingham in 2008/09, also had an 11-point difference from second to seventh. In both cases, the runaways went up automatically.

The 2005/06 season also saw the biggest gap from the automatic places to the team in third after 20 games – Sheffield United enjoying a whopping 10-point cushion over Watford.

Cardiff fans have every right to start believing that the Bluebirds are capable of making this a very special New Year, especially with Warnock adamant the return to fitness of key men can see their side improve.

They will have to, with others likely to use January to do the same because, while the numbers from the past 15 years make for good reading, history is only ever written by the winners.

As Warnock will keep reminding his grounded group, there is some way to go before they can call themselves that.