The News and Star have reported that Simmo has completed this final media conference for the 2022/23 season. You can have a look at the short article here. Simmo's comments relate to the priorities for next season and target point totals. Simmo and his team will set the team various point target totals internally. We might get to find out what the numbers are at the end of next season, but for now, it's a mystery.
Bearing this in mind, I thought I'd take a look over the last 11 historic League One seasons to see what some of the average points totals were to give us an idea of what our point target might be.
Avoiding Relegation
Simmo stated that at the start of the season, the target will be to stay above the dotted line. As you can see the team finishing 20th over the last 11 seasons has finished with an average of 48.8 points. If we're looking at round numbers, the minimum point total we need to get at first glance is 49. However, this point total over the last few years has seen some teams relegated. See below.
Plymouth in 18/19 got 50 points, finished 21st, and they were relegated.
Oldham in 17/18 got 50 points, finished 21st, and they were relegated.
Port Vale in 16/17 got 49 points, finished 21st, and they were relegated.
Notts County & Crawley in 14/15 got 50 points, finished 21st and 22nd, and were relegated.
In our last stint in League One we stayed up in 08/09 coming 20th with 50 points and were relegated in 13/14 coming 22nd with 45 points.
The target number to avoid relegation based on the average over the last 11 seasons is 51 points. That should be our minimum target for our 2023/24 League One season.
Getting into the Playoffs
If we get off to a good start and our home form is good, there is a small possibility of sneaking into the playoffs. Looking at the previous seasons the target for the playoffs should be 75 based on the average, although that total would not have got you into the playoffs the past two seasons.
We would have to deliver the same form throughout the season as we did this year. Our point total was 76, and as an example, Mansfield missed out on the playoffs and they finished with 75 in League Two.
In our last stint in League One, we missed out on the playoffs in 06/07 finishing 8th with 68 points, and 11/12 finishing 8th with 69 points.
Automatics
Should some kind of miracle happen and we find ourselves around the top two come the end of the season, based on the average of the last 11 seasons our target for automatic should be 90 points, or 2 points a game. Win at home and draw away. This seems like a tough ask, but stranger things have happened.
The numbers in this section have a large disparity with Bournemouth getting automatic in 12/13 with 83 points and Ipswich getting 98 points this season. It shows if there are poor teams towards the bottom there are generally more points at the top.
As an example of our last stint in League One, the year we should have gone up automatically 07/08 but faltered at the last hurdle, we finished with 80 points. Bearing in mind at the point we'd played forty games, we were in second, and had 75 points with six games to go.
Let's hope if we're in a similar position this coming season we don't do something comparable.
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