Where Sunderland's play-off hopes stand and the points haul they need to target amid fierce battle with Sheffield Wednesday, Oxford United & Co

74 points is the highest tally in the last ten years of the team finishing sixth, and yet with six games to play Sunderland are only two positive results from that total. Even so, their hopes remain on a knife edge.

So what kind of overall total will Sunderland need to aim for?

If we take each team's points-per-game so far and use it to project their potential final tally, the table looks something like this:

Wigan Athletic - 98 points

Rotherham United - 94 points

Plymouth Argyle - 86 points

Sheffield Wednesday - 83 points

Sunderland - 81 points

Wycombe Wanderers - 78 points

Oxford United - 77 points

Sunderland's trip to Oxford United this weekend is clearly crucial, and a major opportunity for both sides.

A win for Oxford would put them right back into contention after two disappointing results, while a Sunderland win would leave major problems for Karl Robinson's side. The Black Cats would be four points clear with a game-in-hand, and their opponents would still have fixtures against MK Dons (H) and Rotherham United (A) to come.

No side in this century has failed to make the play-offs with a total of 80 points, and that still looks like a decent barometer with a handful of games to go.

Sheffield Wednesday will expect to get beyond that, though they face three difficult away games against Bolton Wanderers, MK Dons and Wycombe Wanderers, whose win against Cambridge on Tuesday night underlined their threat to Sunderland's hopes.

Gareth Ainsworth's side still have difficult fixtures against Plymouth Argyle and that fixture with the Owls, but both take place on their home turf.

Plymouth themselves facing a punishing run-in, but such is the excellence of their work over recent weeks, even two wins from here on in would likely be enough.

Though the margin for error remains minimal, it has been a decent few days for Sunderland whose fate remains firmly in their own hands.

Four wins might well do it, while an ambitious target of five would make it all but certain.