The greatest mathematicians would probably wince and turn away.

Issac Newton and Archimedes would shake their heads in disbelief, Carl F Gauss would say it couldn’t be done.

And yet Dean Saunders is adamant.

Square pegs might not fit into round holes but statistics can be moulded.

Wolves have won just four home games all season and gained 19 points from their 18 games in front of their own supporters. Only Charlton and Peterborough have fared as poorly.

And yet here they are. Faced with Bristol City and Middlesbrough, then in the coming weeks Huddersfield, Hull and Burnley. And after Barnsley’s midweek win dropped them back into the bottom two you’d have to say they need to win three or four of them to stay alive.

Wolves, of course, started the season as one of the favourites for promotion.

They still possess one of the top two or three wage bills in the division. So shouldn’t they really be in the top six?

“I wouldn’t say that, but they shouldn’t be where they are,” said Dean Saunders of his under-achievers.

“That squad should not be where it is and to finish top six in this division... it’s a different league to what Wolves were in last season. Look at Blackburn, Bolton and Birmingham – they thought they should be higher but you can end up getting stuffed by teams you think you should be beating. So we definitely shouldn’t be where we are and we’ve got enough to not be where we are.

“But as for top six, history over the last two-and-a-half years tells you we haven’t won enough games.

“Before I came in we’d lost 13 games in this league, so maybe we’re not good enough to be in the top six. But we’re definitely good enough to be higher than where we are.”

Saunders has managed one win and eight points from his eleven games in charge. Results may not have improved to any noticeable degree – but the boss says performances certainly have.

“The tide has turned,” he said.

“It’s just because we’ve come up against a Forest team who have a bench who can all score goals – Jonathan Greening, Guy Moussi, Lewis McGugan and Billy Sharp – and their two strikers, Dexter Blackstock and Simon Cox, are worth £2m each. All their midfielders are worth money – a lot of them would get in the League’s team of the year.

“They’ve been under-achieving but now they’ve got it going. They’ve Danny Collins and Elliott Ward who have been playing in the Premier League, and Chris Cohen, the left back, is a good player and the right back, Gonzalo Jara, has been playing at West Brom. They’re a good team.

“We’ve played well at Barnsley, we should have got a good result against Cardiff, we then got a draw against Watford then we beat Millwall, which is what we wanted, and then we ran into Forest on Saturday, so it can’t knock us.

“We’ve got to carry on from where we were. I feel like we matched another top team on Saturday, after matching Watford and Cardiff. So let’s look forward to the next six games – four are at home.”