Preston are in the mix for a playoff spot, sitting sixth in the Championship table despite losing three of their last four games.
North End are clinging onto sixth place, and need to get back into form for these last 10 games of the season in order to be a part of the Championship playoffs in May.
Sky Sports have taken an interesting look at the table, putting every single one of pundit David Prutton’s score predictions this season into a league table, to see how the league would look if he was right.
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According to Prutton’s predicted table, Preston should be third in the league, just two points behind Leeds United in the battle for automatic promotion.
North End would have all-but nailed a playoff place by now, holding an 11 point lead over 7th place. Staggeringly, the difference in points between Prutton’s predictions and Preston’s actual points total is a whopping 17.
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In the real table, North End are 12 points shy of Leeds, and have next to no chance of automatic promotion as things stand. At three places higher in the table, Prutton has clearly backed Preston to win a lot of games so far this season.
Prutton hails from Hull and never played for North End, so you can’t even attribute this wild variance to bias; had this been Mark Lawrenson’s predictions, it would have been easier to explain!
Instead, it just seems that Prutton is a big fan of the work Alex Neil is doing at Preston, as he has North End above a whole host of big clubs. We’re already punching above our weight, but in Prutton’s world, we would be knocking on the door of the Premier League with 10 games to play; a real though of what could have been.