Tottenham boss Tim Sherwood has claimed his team could lose four orfive of their remaining 13 Premier League matches and still finish in the top four.

"I would say we can possibly afford to lose four or five games maybe of what we've got left," said Sherwood, while admitting his maths isn't the best.

But can Spurs really lose that many games and still qualify for the Champions League?

We asked the sports data analysts at Bloomberg Sports to crunch the numbers, using a complex algorithm, and they have calculated Tottenham's most likely results between now and the end of the season, as well as the number of points Spurs are most likely to collect and how many they will likely need to finish fourth.

First, here are the results predicted by the Bloomberg Sports boffins with percentages allocated to the likelihood of either a win, loss or draw

Next is a graphic illustrating the most likely points totals Spurs will achieve, with the Lilywhites calculated to have the highest chance (7.5 per cent) of finishing with 67 points.

Finally, after running their simulator over 100,000 times, Bloomberg Sports have calculated that a total of 74.5 points would secure fourth place.

It is not possible to score 0.5 of a point, of course, so assuming that 74 points would be enough to take fourth, that would leave Tottenham on 47 points at time of writing able to lose four of their remaining 13 games and still able to reach the desired total, if they won the other nine to rack up another 27 points.

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'Super computer' says Tim Sherwood is right: Spurs CAN lose four games and reach the Champions League