With four games of the Championship season remaining, Bristol City could finish anywhere between fifth and 22nd - which further showcases the bonkers nature of England’s second tier but also the small margins that lie between being a contender and a struggler.
In truth, the Robins’ chances of finishing inside the top six are remote - even with a perfect end to the campaign - given it requires an almost unfathomable combination of negative results by teams above them to also fall in their favour. While, if they were to lose all four, a side hasn’t been relegated in the region of 53 points since Peterborough United (54) in 2013.
Nigel Pearson spoke last week of a top-10 finish being a realistic aim, which would represent a sharp improvement on their 17th and 55-point haul from the last campaign and 19th and 51 in 2020/21, after he oversaw the final three months of the season.
Incremental progress is what everyone at City wants, eventually leading to a promotion push which was initially hoped for within BS3 for this season but, while still mathematically possible, the scope of the club’s late winter injury list has seen reality bite.
For the manager, exactly where the Robins are positioned at the end of play at Loftus Road on May 8 will only be one barometer of where his squad can consider themselves, because internally they’re already “miles apart” from previous iterations of the squad on his watch.
Pearson has been in charge of a major salary-shedding exercise at City, bringing it down from £35.3m to £30.3m in the last accounts with further savings made for this season, enabling the club to fall in line with the EFL’s Profit & Sustainability rules.
It’s also allowed the pathway between academy and first-team to open up once again, shedding several beams of light on what has been overall trying times for the fanbase, but the talent coming through have also made for economically sound solutions.
Bringing the wage bill down has also naturally trimmed the squad he’s been working with, as 25 players have made at least one league start in 2022/23 (although that is likely to be further added to over this quartet of matches) compared with 27 last term and 36 the season before.
Beyond just numbers as well, Pearson insists his squad now possesses the right sort of characters across the board - a combination of football smart and altruistic seniors such as Matty James, Kal Naismith, Andy King and Andi Weimann, young hungry talents of Alex Scott, Tommy Conway and Anis Mehmeti’s ilk and everything in between. That chimes with his previous comments of certain players to have departed that they grew “too comfortable” at the club.
There are still obvious holes, no doubt - the aforementioned league position displays such in very raw terms - in terms of the types of players the team is missing, all of which will try to be signed over the course of the summer window.
But while Pearson’s assessment of this version of City against previous models isn’t formed totally irrespective of the league position, it’s also not a underlying metric that is going to drive his analysis. At least not yet, with 2023/24, and the final year of his contract, the ultimate indicator of how successful the rebuild has been.
“For me it’s more about where the squad’s at and our squad’s better this season and we are looking a more accomplished team, but we’ve got games left where there’ll be very tough challenges for us so we’ve got to work exceptionally hard to finish the season as well as we can,” Pearson said.
"But as far as I’m concerned, it’s just having a group of players who apply themselves correctly, try to win games, and if they do that you’re not going to have too many complaints from me.
"You’ve heard me talk a lot over the last couple of years in terms of having a committed, driven squad and I think we’re getting there in that regard because compared to where we were two years in not just the footballing side of it but the atmosphere and the culture within the club it’s chalk and cheese. It’s miles apart.
“We’re in a better position whether people want to judge it on just points alone is up to them. When you’re trying to construct a squad, one of the most important things is that you get the technical aspect of it right and we still need to address that and we’ve still got areas of the side that we need to be stronger of course. But in terms of what they bring as a group, we’re getting there.”
With the character and profile of his squad “getting there” in terms of what he believes is an elite Championship outfit, this summer represents the opportunity for the manager to significantly raise the requisite skill level, albeit with the caveat of potentially having to sell his highest-level skill player in Scott.
That’s a debate for a different day but to keep the feeling of development moving forward, City do probably need to exceed their 55-point haul from last term, just to provide the fanbase with a tangible sense of forward progress because, ultimately, they aren’t privy to the inner-workings and the atmosphere of the squad.
And while it may not be Pearson’s chief barometer, the only one which supporters are able to reference on discussing such steps forward is what transpires on a Saturday afternoon or in midweek, and how that impacts where the Robins sit in the league hierarchy.
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