The most recent information about Leicester City as it relates to the distance between second and third position after the midweek Championship games.
This week, Leicester City moved one step closer to their season’s end objective. They will want to accomplish it once again this weekend when they play Middlesbrough.
Tuesday night’s easy 2-0 victory against Sheffield Wednesday, along with Southampton’s defeat by Bristol City, increased City’s lead at the top of the league and the distance to third place. Now, Enzo Maresca’s team leads second-place Leeds United by 12 points and third-place Saints by 14 points.
For City, getting back into the Premier League as quickly as possible will be the top priority. This is the time of year that people break out the calculators to figure out exactly how many points they need from the games left to win in order for that to happen.
Let’s start by examining a top-two finish that is assured. City needs another 31 points to guarantee that 100%, but with their better goal differential, 30 should be plenty.
That means they have 10 wins out of the 14 games they still have left. They would then have 108 points, which is the most points that fourth-place Ipswich and second-place United, who both have a game in hand, can obtain from their remaining games.
Because the race for second place is so closely contested, City currently needs just one more point to secure the Championship title. Again, mathematically, 32 points would guarantee it, but practically speaking, 31 points ought to be sufficient to take first place and enable City to score as many points as possible against the Saints—109.
Naturally, if City reached those two totals, they would surpass Reading’s Championship point total. In 2006, the Royals scored 106 points. City needs 29 more points to surpass that amount, which means they can afford to lose four and draw one of their final 14 games to finish the season.
As is always the case with championship seasons, there are still many unknowns and unexpected turns in store. Over the next few weeks and months, there’s no doubt that a lot more use of the calculators will occur.
