Supercomputer predicts how many points Cardiff City, Lincoln & Bolton Wanderers will gain before May 2nd | OneFootball

Football League World checks in with Opta's predictions on how many points the top three in League One will accumulate at the end of the season

We're into the final stretch of the campaign in League One, and right now, Cardiff City and Lincoln City have a strong grip on their places in the top two.

However, with between 14 and 16 games remaining for every side in the division, anything can happen, and the likes of Bolton Wanderers, Stockport County, and even Bradford City, who have recently got back on the winning trail, are waiting in the wings to potentially capitalise on a drop in form.

A lot of hard work has been done over six months to be promotion contenders at this point in the season, but now it's all about maintaining that when it matters.

Opta's supercomputer predicts the final league standings throughout the campaign as it goes on, but it also predicts the number of points that each team will finish on.

Football League World has checked in to see what those final points tallies are for the current top two, and the closest challenger in Bolton, to calculate how many more points each team will pick up between now and May 2nd.

Cardiff City - 24 points

It's worth noting that Opta's points predictions are rather neutral.

They don't predict sides to go on massive unbeaten runs, so it may come as a surprise to some that Cardiff, who have averaged well over two points per game through 31 games, sitting on 66 points, are expected to end the campaign on 90.

It's still enough to win the title, but it would resemble a bit of a drop-off, as the Bluebirds still have 15 games remaining. For reference, Brian Barry Murphy's side have picked up 25 points over their last 11 games.

Now that run has seen them win seven and lose none, and the likelihood will be that they may lose a few more games between now and the end of the campaign, which will reduce that point per game ratio.

But, given their 2026 form thus far, Cardiff fans will be hoping that they could finish around the mid-nineties points-wise en route to a league title, rather than just scrape the number late on.

Lincoln City - 25 points

Opta feels that Lincoln will maintain a similar points per game to Cardiff, if not slightly better, through their final 15 games to comfortably finish second.

Given the prospect of playing in the second tier for the first time since the 1960/61campaign, there's no doubt that Imps fans just want to finish in that top two, and while the prospect of pushing Cardiff to the limit is exciting, the focus is on achieving promotion, no matter how it comes.

And, after a completely dominant performance against Bolton on Saturday, where they were made to rue missed chances as the Trotters escaped with a point, there'll be plenty of confident fans in the LNER stadium in their side's ability to see out the campaign in the top two.

There's still work to do, though, and points to be won. But Opta feels that 25 will be more than enough.

Bolton Wanderers - 21 points

With just 14 games remaining, Bolton are at a slight disadvantage, given that both Cardiff and Lincoln have games in hand.

Stockport, who are fourth, have two games in hand over Steven Schumacher's side, and Opta actually believes that the Hatters will pip Bolton to third place come the end of the campaign, as the Trotters are predicted to finish on 77 points, 21 more than they are on now.

It's been an uphill task for Bolton over the past few weeks to cut that gap between themselves and the top two. Before the draw with Lincoln, they'd won five and drawn one of their previous six, and were still six points behind, having played a game more.

Ultimately, the Trotters gave themselves too much to do with a run of draws at the start of the season and with a middling set of results to end 2025.

A return to the play-offs will have been the minimum requirement for this season, and all eyes will be on whether Steven Schumacher could go one further than Ian Evatt and finally secure that long-awaited promotion to the Championship.