How Many Points Do You Need To Stay Up In The Championship?

Managers often throw out '50 points' as the magical line of safety to stay up in the Championship but much like the '40 point' cliche in the Premier League, it's usually far more than your need.

With 48 points currently on the board, Reading would have already survived in seven of the past ten campaigns, with 55 being the highest needed for safety in the past decade. Last year just 42 were needed to escape the drop into the third tier, a points tally we reached by beating Charlton at the end of February.

Right now, the maximum points needed to stay up would be 58 and even that would require the MK Dons to win seven in a row during a campaign that's seen them win nine all season....

I can understand why some fans get nervous, especially when the team seems to be losing every other week but the key is that Reading have been slowly grinding out points all season, something that just can't be said for the bottom three. It's easy to focus on what Reading are doing badly but the bottom line is you only need to be better than three teams to stick around in the Championship and we've been far from that bad this season.

So relax folks, it looks like we'll be sticking around in the second tier for another season.