Swansea City bolstered their promotion hopes by beating Sheffield Wednesday 2-0 at Hillsborough.
Victory over Darren Moore’s side – which came just three days after a 3-0 triumph over Millwall at The Den – lifted the Swans up to third in the table.
It means Steve Cooper’s troops are now just seven points behind second-placed Watford while they have a nine-point buffer over Reading, who are seventh with five games left of the regular season.
Since the Football League was restructured in 2004, sides who finish sixth in the Championship end the campaign with an average of 74 points.
Swansea have amassed 75 points already and still have to play Wycombe Wanderers, Queens Park Rangers, Reading, Derby County and Watford in the coming weeks.
It now means they need just four more points to guarantee a play-off spot – providing that they beat Reading at the Madejski Stadium on Sunday, April 25. In this scenario, victory over the Royals alone could be enough, depending on goal difference, meaning three points could do the trick.
Even if they lost to Veljko Paunović’s men, seven points from the other four games would guarantee a play-off spot, while even six could be enough depending on goal difference – although this is all dependant on Reading being flawless, so the reality is Swansea won’t need that many points anyway.
The reality is, 75 points could already be enough for Swansea.
As for the race for second, Watford’s destiny remains firmly in their own hands.
Swansea do, of course, play Watford on the final day of the regular season, but they will need to make up at least four points on Xisco Munoz’s side – or more realistically five points given Watford’s superior goal difference – before playing them at Vicarage Road on May 8.
Watford still have to play both Norwich City and Brentford before hosting Swansea next month, so things could yet change.
“We’re certainly chasing now, as I said after Millwall, we opened up a big gap really,” said Cooper after the win over Sheffield Wednesday.
“When there’s a chance it gives you hope and when you have hope then you keep going. That will be what we always do.
“Until something is not possible, we will be fighting like we do.
“Let’s see how that one goes, but at the end of the day, what we’ve got to do is just keep picking up points as we’ve done in the last two games and don’t take anything for granted.”
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