Bundesliga upcoming fixtures - which of the next eight can delete a clinch line, and which cannot

Eight Bundesliga fixtures sit in the data, and six of them can erase a number from the table on a single result. Three of the six take a top-four clinch line off the board, and a fourth joins them if Elversberg's line is still standing on Tuesday. The first two are this week. Leverkusen host Leipzig on Sunday, Schalke host Elversberg on Monday, and Leipzig and Elversberg are the only clubs outside the top three carrying a top-four clinch line. Both lines read 93 points from 31 remaining matches. Thirty-one matches are worth 93 points. One dropped point in either game and that line is gone.

Everything below is as of the September 20 update, which covers 33 of the season's 306 matches. The latest result in the data is Dortmund's 1-0 win at Stuttgart on Sunday, and Sunday's Leverkusen fixture is still to be played. The eight fixtures run here in date order.

Start with how few numbers are on the board at all. Four of the clubs inside these eight fixtures carry a top-four clinch line: Dortmund at 87 points from 30 matches, Bayern at 89 from 30, Leipzig and Elversberg at 93 from 31. Freiburg carry the fifth, 89 from 30, and appear in none of the eight. Every other club has none, and a club with no line cannot have one deleted. One number is rarer still. Dortmund's 88 from 30 is the only title clinch line in the league.

The two this week work the same way. Leipzig are seventh on 6 points from three matches. Elversberg are eighth on 6 points from three. Both have 31 matches left, and 31 wins is the only run of results that reaches 93. A draw leaves 91 at best, a defeat 90. Leverkusen against Leipzig on Sunday and Schalke against Elversberg on Monday are the first two of four fixtures in the data where a single result removes a top-four clinch line. The other two are on October 10: Augsburg against Bayern, and Union Berlin against Elversberg if Elversberg's line survives Monday. Neither Leverkusen, tenth on 4 points, nor Schalke, eleventh on 4, has a line of their own to lose in the same match.

The third fixture this week moves nothing at the top. Paderborn host Hoffenheim on Monday, and neither club has a top-four line. What that match reaches is the safety column. Paderborn's safety line is 90 points from 31 matches, the highest posted in the league, and it allows exactly one dropped match out of 31. Hoffenheim's is 88 from 31, which allows two, though at least one of the two has to be a draw. Neither line dies on Monday: a Paderborn defeat still leaves 30 wins from 30 as a route to 90. Then the data goes quiet. No fixture in it falls between September 22 and October 9, eighteen days with nothing on the board. Every clinch and tragic number in the table is a statement about results, so a stretch with no results in the data is a stretch where nothing in the table changes. When the schedule picks up again on October 10 it picks up all at once, with five matches on the same day, three of which put a club that carries a top-four clinch line against one that carries none.

Two of those five can delete a top-four line. Augsburg host Bayern. Bayern's line is 89 points from 30 matches, and 89 is not a total 30 matches can produce: it would take 29 wins and two draws, which is 31 matches. The only way to reach it is to take all 90. Bayern's 89 is a perfect record written in another form, and the first dropped point removes it. Augsburg are fourth on 7 points with no clinch line, so only one side of that fixture has anything to lose arithmetically. Union Berlin host Elversberg, the second of Elversberg's two fixtures in the data. If the 93 survives Monday, this is where it goes next, and it dies here on any dropped point too. Union Berlin have 1 point from four matches and are one of only two clubs with no reachable safety line today.

The other three on October 10 reach lower down the table, or nowhere. Dortmund host Werder Bremen, and Dortmund's numbers behave differently. Twenty-nine wins and a defeat is exactly 87, so the top-four line survives one dropped match and dies on the second. The title line of 88 needs 29 wins and a draw at minimum. A draw at home to Werder keeps both lines. A defeat keeps the top-four line and takes the title line off the board. Werder Bremen are sixth on 7 points with no line of their own. Paderborn host Stuttgart, and the number at risk there is Stuttgart's, not Paderborn's: Stuttgart's safety line of 88 from 30 needs 29 wins and a draw at minimum, so a defeat removes it, while Paderborn's 90 allows one dropped match. Mainz host Leverkusen, and that one erases nothing. Mainz are fifth on 7 points with a safety line of 84 from 30, Leverkusen tenth on 4 with 87 from 31, and neither club is within a single result of its own edge.

What to watch is narrow. Sunday and Monday decide whether the top-four column still shows five lines, four or three, because Leipzig and Elversberg play separate matches and can drop points separately. Then eighteen days of nothing. On October 10 four numbers sit one result from disappearing: Bayern's 89, Elversberg's 93 if it is still there, Dortmund's title line of 88 on a defeat, and Stuttgart's safety line of 88 on a defeat. Five clubs, Freiburg, Frankfurt, Köln, Hamburg and Mönchengladbach, appear in none of the eight and cannot change their own numbers until the schedule reaches them.

How to read these numbers. A clinch number is the minimum a club must still collect to guarantee an outcome even if every rival wins every remaining match, which is why September lines look absurd rather than likely. A tragic number is the number of further defeats after which the outcome is impossible even if that club wins everything else. Ties are counted against the club in question, so our clinch can trail an official announcement by a day. The remaining fixtures are on the schedule page, the full table on the league page, the qualifying and relegation rules on the postseason page, and each club's own line on its own page, such as Leipzig's. To run one of these results through and see which line disappears, use the what-if page.