Mick McCarthy on Blackpool's relegation fight, points target and 'torture' for Cardiff City and others

The Seasiders now sit bottom of the table following their weekend stalemate against Rotherham United, yet are now only one point adrift of safety.

Having studied the final tables in recent seasons, McCarthy says it normally takes around 44 points to stay up.

Given Blackpool’s current points-per-game of 0.93, McCarthy’s side will finish on around 43 points if their current trend of results continues.

The veteran boss doesn’t want his side to just scrape by though and has challenged his squad to get back to winning ways as soon as possible – starting with the trip to Swansea City on Wednesday night – and target more than 44 points.

“I think 44 is the total over the last two years,” McCarthy said.

“I have to be honest, teams in the bottom three, from January onwards, if you can get a point a game you’re doing alright. Very often it doesn’t happen.

“We’ve got to try and get above that, get more than 44 points. We need to start winning games.

“We’ve had two games against our nearest and not-so-dearest and we’ve got Stoke coming up. There are teams who can still be caught.

“We’re in the bottom three, so we’ve got no worries about dropping in. But those teams who are just outside it, it’s torturous that. They’re thinking ‘the last place I want to be is in the bottom three’.

“All we can do is keep looking upwards, whereas the teams three, four and five places above it are always looking backwards and are concerned about it.

“I take that as a positive. Not that we’re in the bottom three, I’m not saying that, but you’re scrapping upwards. You can’t be worried about scrapping upwards because you’ve just got to go and have it every week and try and pick up points.

“But the ones outside are so concerned about dropping in the bottom three, I just think we might be able to take advantage of that.”