Crystal Palace's revival encapsulates just how tight the Premier League relegation battle will be in 2018

League tables are a funny thing, aren’t they?

Teams are ordered on the amount of points they have accrued over the course of the season but those standings – these official rankings – actually mean nothing until the final game is over.

After 17 of their 38 Premier League games this season, Crystal Palace made their way above an imaginary dashed line and out of the relegation zone for the first time. It was only for 24 hours, with West Bromwich Albion’s point at Anfield on Wednesday then seeing them leap out of the bottom three, but it was an immense psychological boost for a team who had suffered defeats in their first seven games – not even mustering a goal.

Looking at the bottom half of the Premier League table it is hard to pick three teams for relegation right now, though the three that are currently looking upwards at that dashed line of safety –Palace, West Ham and Swansea – are likely to be in the mix.

The reality, though, is that with ten teams separated by just six points it is hard to say that any bottom-half team is safe.

Leicester’s four consecutive wins, a feat for which Claude Puel has got scant recognition, have pulled the Foxes up and out of the foggy mess, while Watford and Everton look like they will be fine.

But from 11th downwards, starting with a distinctly off-colour Southampton side, there are a lot of average teams from whom any could feasibly be playing in the Championship next season.

Huddersfield and Brighton came up from there last May and are desperate to avoid a swift return but the two clubs’ promising starts have fizzled out slightly. Both have lost four of their last five games, and Brighton haven’t won in six weeks now. The mood at Albion is calm but that imaginary line separating 17th and 18th place has a curious effect on people. As it approaches, the temptation to do ever more radical things in order to arrest the slide grows swiftly. It is about knowing when to give in to it.

There will be one team in the bottom half who fire a manager hoping to kickstart their season and see it fail. There will likely be a team who stick with their man only to see that loyalty go unrewarded. These are always the decisions at the bottom of the league but it is rare to see a gaggle of mediocre sides so bunched at this stage in the season.

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In fact, it has been years since we had a low bundle of teams so inseparable. It means that every win seems to mean so much more or, at least, it does until the next defeat.

For Palace on Tuesday night, things looked particularly grim as the arctic wind chilled them en route to seemingly inevitable defeat. The BBC Radio London commentators who had spent most of the second half lamenting the “disgraceful” lack of quality in the game began to wonder out loud if Roy Hodgson had been the right man for the job at Selhurst Park – “the results aren’t there right now” – and then, bam! 2-1 several minutes later, Palace reborn, six unbeaten and out of the relegation zone.

By Monday, this relegation picture will have a new look to it. After Christmas the situation will have a different appearance. Come January, some will have risen and some will have fallen. For now, it doesn’t necessarily matter for anything but a team’s own emotional wellbeing – an imaginary line used for guidance only.

But by the final day, with so many teams likely to be in the mix, nothing will feel bigger.

And with the Premier League title likely to be wrapped up by then, it might be the only major storyline of interest come the business end of the season.