The Poolie Bunker

Right, we're seriously advanced enough in our promotion quest that this kind of think is no longer wishful thinking.
With a seven point cushion, promotion has never been so firmly in our own hands.

So here are the two yardsticks you need to know.

1) the promotulator

This is the number of clubs that can no longer catch us in the league.
When that reaches 21 then there are only two other clubs left besides us so promotion is guaranteed innit.

Currently Torquay and Boston can no longer catch us on points. Wrexham and Accrington could if they won every single game and we lost all ours, and then they'd have to overturn whopping great GD advantages to overtake us. So we'll call that two more teams who in the real world are never going to beat us to it.

So the promotulator stands at 4, with 17 to go to make it 21.

2) the magic promotion number

This number tells us how many more points we need to take to guarantee promotion - OR - how many points the closest challengers have to drop. Obviously when it reaches zero we're up. So for example if we win the next game against Hereford the MPN will fall by three points. If Lincoln lose or draw their next game and MK Donalds lose theirs it will fall by a further 3 points in addition to that.

So if we look at the current highest possible points totals of all the teams, we see that the fourth highest is that of Mk Donalds who can get 97 points. So to put them out of sight we theoretically *could* need 98 points, i.e., 28 more.

So 28 is your magic promotion number. Let's watch how quickly it comes down!

So, says thicket Kev, if we get 28 out of the remaining 33 points, no-one can touch us anyway, no matter what they do??

That's right my dear kev. And every point they drop makes the job easier.
For automatic promotion that is. The league title is a squidge harder.