No team with the Swans' current points total after four games has ever been relegated from the Premier League
Good morning! I think I just turned a slow news day into a day where we've got a good stat to debate. I was looking at a table of the Premier League, and after recently commenting on The JackCast that I thought we were already safe from relegation I wondered whether, statistically, that panned out. So I got in touch with everybody's favourite stats account on Twitter, OptaJoe. Appropriate.
Here's what I tweeted, and Opta's response:
7 - No team has ever taken more than 7 points from their first 4 games and been relegated from the Premier League. Safe. @TheSwanseaWay
— OptaJoe (@OptaJoe) September 18, 2014
As you can see, no team with more than seven points from their opening four games has ever been relegated from the Premier League. Ever. Are we safe? Personally I think so. Say for example we need thirty-eight points for survival this season (although I actually think it might even be a little lower than that), that leaves us needing another twenty-nine points. From thirty-four games. That means we need to pick up around 0.85 points per game for the rest of the season, which winning one game in three would achieve - and some.
Obviously, football is a funny old game and stranger things have happened than this kind of trend being broken, but I can't see it. Swansea City safe already? I'd say so.