By Nathan Jackson
February 19 2008

A run of 5 wins in a row now means that City have climbed away from the relegation zone, and now several fans are talking about a potential appearance in this season's Playoffs. It's a far cry away from just 4 weeks ago when the Imps were in serious danger of relegation, but recent optimism about a potential Playoff place is more than likely going to be an unrealistic title.

City's 5 wins in a row have seen City move onto 40 points and 12 points clear of the drop zone. That gap could increase to 13 points if Chester go into administration this week, which some sources in Chester are claiming is extremely likely to happen.

With City now realistically safe a few fans have been optimistically saying that we could still easily reach the Playoffs. Unfortunately that target is extremely unrealistic if you look the amount of points it's taken each team to grab the final Playoff qualification place with. Below is a table that shows how many points the lowest placed qualifiers have needed in order to get into the Playoffs.

MINIMUM POINTS TO MAKE PLAYOFFS
POINTS	YEARS
74	2003/4 (Lincoln)
72	1995/6 (Colchester), 1999/2000 (Hartlepool), 2000/1 (Blackpool), 2004/5 (Northampton)
71	1988/9 (Wrexham), 1989/90 (Chesterfield), 1990/1 (Scunthorpe), 1998/9 (Swansea), 2001/2 (Hartlepool), 2006/7 (Shrewsbury)
70	1986/7 (Aldershot), 1987/8 (Swansea), 1997/8 (Barnet), 2002/3 (Bury)
69	1991/2 (Barnet), 1996/7 (Cardiff)
66	2005/6 (Lincoln)
65	1994/5 (Mansfield)
64	1993/4 (Carlisle)
63	1992/3 (Bury)

It is unlikely that 63 points will be the minimum required to get into the Playoffs, with 71 points looking the most likely target. So City need 31 points from 13 games, meaning we need at least 10 wins and a draw to realistically grab a place.

Fortunately for the Imps there don't seem to be many teams who seem to want to grab 7th place. Much like the top spot in the Championship, 7th place in League Two seems to change hands every single week.

Realistically looking at it we're not going to make the Playoffs. More than 30 points is too many required from so few games. Obviously it's not impossible but we still have to play 6 of the current Top 7 again, 4 of those at home with trips to Peterborough and Rotherham United.

Since John Schofield seemingly tried his hardest to ruin all the hard work that had gone into Keith's time at the club, the target has been simply to survive and realistically we're safe. A lot of the teams below us now can't seemingly pick up a win and you can near enough safely bet that at least 3 or 4 teams will finish below us this season (famous last words).

Now this season has become one of consolidation. A top half finish would be nice and is quite a realistic target given that 12th placed Grimsby are 5 points above us. However, this report isn't going to be one of full negativity. In the recent past both Scunthorpe and Bristol City were in the promotion shake up each year, had one bad season and then went up the next season..watch that space.