That's absolutely true, but the point here is that there's so many teams invoved in this that you can say with some assuredness that not all of them will buck the trend of what they've been doing for the last 27 games or so. There will defo be a team that does what we did late last season and beats other clubs unexpectedly to get out of it. But most wont.
The fact its 8 other teams, means it's very likely the best they do is keep to a similar trajectory, which has survival at 35/36. However if you factor in form, the more likely outcome is probably a little lower.
The tail risk scenario in that, is 3 teams fall away. When they are 9 teams involved, that is not that unlikely. In reality, Southampton, West Ham, Leeds, Palace and to a degree Bournemouth/Leicester are on form to fall away and collapse. It only needs 3 to continue.
I think it's quite unlikely it remains this tight until the end of the season. Teams start to get cut off. It may only be 1 or 2, so it goes from.3 from 9, to say 2 from 7, or 1 from 5 or whatever.
What I'll say, is it's actually pretty difficult to turn around a poor run of form so late into a season, without the ability to freshen the dressing room up. Even someone like Allardyce, who is the relegation specialist would typically take 6-8 games to get his methods embedded before results turn around. Nobody has that time now.
