Where will we finish?Updated: December 20th, 2006

I’m not going to make a guess myself, as I believe our form will largely depend on injuries and suspensions, and what happens in the January transfer window. Plus I’m chicken.

But Betfair has us down to finish between 12th and 16th with a points total of 39 to 48.

My early season gloom still hasn’t lifted, though, and after chatting to an accountant about City’s finances (more about that tomorrow) and reading that the Sky TV money increases by 60% next season, I’ll settle for anything above 17th.

Anyway, I thought I’d take a look at how each team is doing so far by comparing results to the corresponding fixtures from last season.

So here’s a table of the most improved/underachieving teams so far. Results against last season’s relegated clubs - Sunderland, West Brom and Birmingham - are compared to Sheff Utd, Watford and Reading respectively:

Next, I worked out how many points City would finish on if we dropped an average 0.15pts per game for the rest of the season, then worked out the equivalent points totals for other clubs.

Obviously this is more statistical fun than a basis for predicting the final table, but Arsenal’s 15th place and Newcastle’s 20th are a pretty good indicator of how much those two have been underperforming.

Finally, I thought I’d list our remaining fixtures and the number of points won from them last season. The three that stand out are Villa, Bolton and Spurs. While we’re in serious danger of dropping 3-5pts against Villa, hopefully we can recoup any loss from the four games against Bolton and Spurs.

News round-up

Corradi and Barton have both made the Actim team of the week. But only three City players - Barton (25th), Dunne (52nd) and Distin (90th) - make it into the Actim Top 100.

~ Uwe Rosler has been appointed head coach of Norwegian premier league side Viking (link). Rosler was considered unlucky to be sacked by Lillestrom, who finished fourth and reached the cup final in his first season, despite the club having financial problems.

Last month I heard him interviewed on TalkSport and it was clear his heart is still at City. After talking about the great time he had at City and his regret that at the end “the ship was going down and down” he remarked: “Now we are having better times again.”

Rosler told TalkSport he wanted a couple more years experience before attempting to manage a top flight club, hopefully in England. While stopping short of saying he’d love to manage City, that was certainly the impression he created.

~ Willie Donachie has been appointed permanent manager of Millwall (link) after guiding the club to 5 wins and 3 draws in 10 league games.

I wrote a piece about Donachie, who used to go out with my school’s cookery teacher, which can be found here.