What are you basing that on exactly? To get 40 points you need just over 1.05points per game on average, the bottom 9 teams are all on course for a sub 40 point finish as it stands. The bottom 5 teams are on course for under 35 points, though that does include Palace whose first 7 games and Hodgson only taking over before a Manchester away double means their ppg since is enough to go quite a bit higher than 40, at the same time, other teams are doing much worse since.
On the last 8 games alone there are 8 teams with a less than 1 ppg average (watford gone to crap on 0.5, Palace on a strong 1.38).
This season looks very much like at least 4 teams won't make it to 40 and wouldn't be surprising if 5 didn't.
Nothing really, I haven't looked at past tables or anything, was just a musing. Bournemouth won the other day and went from the bottom 3 to 13th, I can't really remember a year like that, we say 40 is the magic number but obviously that's just a rough number. I wouldn't be surprised to see 2 clubs in the higher 30's maybe a club on 39/40 get relegated this year