Scott McCarthy: You don't need a maths degree to work out what Albion have to do to stay up

By The Newsroom
Published 27th Mar 2018, 12:34 BST
Updated 8th Jun 2018, 06:37 BST
Pascal Gross celebrates scoring at the Amex during Albion's draw with Stoke. Picture by Phil Westlake (PW Sporting Photography)Pascal Gross celebrates scoring at the Amex during Albion's draw with Stoke. Picture by Phil Westlake (PW Sporting Photography)
Pascal Gross celebrates scoring at the Amex during Albion's draw with Stoke. Picture by Phil Westlake (PW Sporting Photography)
We are getting to the stage in the Premier League season where you begin to wish you'd paid a little more attention to maths at school.

While it’s safe to say that nobody ever thinks about surds, algebra and the square root of pi once they’ve finished their GCSE’s, some basic knowledge of numbers can come in handy when working out what will happen over the next six weeks if Southampton win at West Ham United, Bournemouth hammer Palace and Huddersfield take something from Watford.

It’s made particularly complicated by how tight the bottom half of the table is; eight points separating tenth down to 17th means that realistically anyone in the bottom half of the table on a poor run of form could find themselves heading for the Championship next season.

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You don’t need a maths degree to work out what the Albion need to do however. Over the past 22 years, only three teams have gone down having collected more than 40 points – Sunderland in 1996/97, Bolton Wanderers a season later and West Ham in 2002/03.