The promotion points total Portsmouth need to reach for in battle with Derby County, Bolton Wanderers, Barnsley, Peterborough United & Co

Eleven games to go - 33 points to battle for as the race for the Championship continues.

But where exactly does the finish line lie? How much deeper are Pompey going to have to dig, as the promotion marathon enters the final stages?

Of course, we cannot definitively state what the magic number is going to be to lift the League One title, nor the figure required to secure the second automatic berth to go up.

But history is often a decent indicator of what lies ahead, which enables us to delve into the data to gauge what is now needed from John Mousinho’s men to finish the job they’ve started.

When assessing the final League One tables from the 1995-96 season onwards, with the exception of the Covid-impacted 2019-20 campaign, we arrive at a magic figure.

The average total to finish first from those 28 campaigns is 93.6 points, with Wolves providing a high of 103 points in the 2013-14 season and Southend the low of 82 points in 2006.

To get that second automatic berth to go up the mean figure is 87.39 points across the same period, spanning a high of 98 points from Ipswich last term and low of 79 from Colchester in 2006.

Pompey are currently 20 points short of the 93-point average for first place, with 14 points required to hit the average for second spot.

As John Mousinho himself has highlighted, however, there are anomalies with the most extreme example 12 months ago, with 96 points not enough for Sheffield Wednesday to finish in the top two.

On that occasion Plymouth accumulated 101 points with Ipswich on 98. There was then a 10-point drop-off from the Owls to Barnsley in fourth, with the top three breaking away from the rest of the pack.

With Pompey seven points clear but playing more games than their rivals, and 10 points covering the teams from second to seventh, there doesn’t look likely to be a repeat this year.

The 73 points accumulated so far by Mousinho’s side so far is above average for the top side at this point, however. Bolton are the only other side hitting the two-points-per-game threshold associated with automatic promotion (92 points over a season) at present.

That suggests perhaps the number required to get second spot may be above the norm this season, with Pompey arriving at just shy of 96 points (95.88) if they maintained their 2.08 points-per-game pace from the first 35 matches.

Another significant factor which may lower the total required to get over the line, is the amount of top sides still to face each other over the finale.

Mousinho’s side have to take on the rest of the top six, as do Bolton. Oxford and Peterborough have three of the sides currently in the play-off places ,with Derby and Barnsley tackling two apiece. Naturally that means points being dropped against each other over the coming weeks.

So six wins and a couple of draws from 11 games gets Pompey to 93-points, with form across the season suggesting they are more than capable of hitting that magical total.