If we're looking to finish top 8 then 27-28 points after the halfway stage would put us on course for that, even if we have a horrible run from now until January we should still be picking up 12 points from 12 games, as you say though I think we're capable of about 20 in that period so things could be looking very good come the New Year.
I almost feel ridiculous to even suggest we could get tweny points from the next 11 or 12 games and take us into January as serious runners for 6th, at the start of the season I would have had us on 10/11 points maximum at this stage. I know that's not far short of what we're on - but that would have been looking at it from an optimistic point of view too.