Nottingham Forest will feel in confident mood going into the November international break.
The Reds beat arch rivals Derby County 1-0 at the City Ground at the weekend to enter the two-week hiatus in fifth place in the Sky Bet Championship table.
Sabri Lamouchi’s side are three points outside of the with a game in hand, with Leeds United and Preston North End currently occupying the top two spots in the table.
So could this be the year that Forest finally get promoted and return to the Premier League?
Respected statistics and analysis website FiveThirtyEight has forecast the final standings in the Sky Bet Championship this season, based on a complex model which takes into account a host of factors.
They have crunched the numbers and are predicting that Forest will finish in seventh place in the final standings, and narrowly miss out on the play-offs.
The prediction has tipped the Reds to accumulate 71 points, level on points with Swansea City who are predicted to finish sixth.
Interestingly, the prediction also says that both teams will finish with a plus-eight goal difference, which would imply that Swansea score more goals than Forest over the course of the season, in order to end up above the Reds in the table.
The other sides predicted to finish in the play-offs are Fulham, Preston and Brentford, while West Bromwich Albion and Leeds are being tipped for automatic promotion.
The predicted table has given Forest a 15% chance of securing promotion to the Premier League, with a 30% chance of getting there via the play-offs.
It has also been predicted that Forest have a 3% chance of winning the Championship title.
Here is the full predicted table made by FiveThirtyEight.
- Leeds
- West Brom
- Fulham
- Preston
- Brentford
- Swansea City
- Nottingham Forest
- Bristol City
- Sheffield Wednesday
- Cardiff City
- QPR
- Hull City
- Birmingham City
- Millwall
- Derby County
- Blackburn Rovers
- Huddersfield
- Reading
- Charlton Athletic
- Stoke City
- Wigan Athletic
- Middlesbrough
- Luton Town
- Barnsley
