Will record points haul be required to guarantee safety?published at 12:49 21 April
Nick McPheat
BBC Sport Scotland

How many times have you heard a relegation-threatened manager talk about the need to hit the coveted 40-point mark?
Well, the truth is, no Scottish Premiership team has ever required that total to avoid the bottom two since the play-offs were brought back more than a decade ago.
However, that is projected to change this season.
Based on current points-per-game averages, 11th-placed Dundee are set to end on a total of 39, meaning 40 could be the magic number to guarantee safety.
If that is the case, that would mark the highest tally required to ensure survival in Scotland's top tier since 38-game seasons were reintroduced in the 2000-01 campaign.
That would also mean Hearts are effectively safe, given they are already on 40 points and four teams would need to make up ground on them, while eighth-placed Motherwell would need just a single point from five post-split games.
With Kilmarnock in ninth and Ross County in tenth both currently on 35, which is just one more than Dundee's 34, the fight to avoid 11th is clearly likelier to be between those three.
But that is not set in stone. The nature of the split means each team in the bottom half will face the other before the end of the campaign, so there is scope for points-per-game averages to fluctuate.
And what does all of this mean for St Johnstone? Well, the 33 points Simo Valakari's side are projected to finish on would be the highest for a bottom-placed team in the Premiership since 2017.
That would be no consolation for the Perth club if they go down, but that is certainly not guaranteed to happen just yet.
However, they have a real fight on their hands to make up a five-point gap while improving their inferior goal difference.
