Tips for drop don't look so hideous

For about the past five seasons in a row I have tipped Stoke, Southampton and Crystal Palace to go down. Each year they seem to have clubbed together to defy me and stay in the top division.

But this year... well, who knows? It’s looking like I have half a chance of being proved at least partially right for a change.

West Brom are the fly in the ointment at the moment. I’ll have a job to get three out of three with them performing so poorly. Maybe we (Pompey) can arrange to go and play them on the final day if they just need a nice little comfortable victory to send someone else down.

It was in this very column at the start of September that I made my latest forecast of gloom for SFC, SCFC and CPFC.

My other predictions for this season were: Man City to win the league (almost sorted), Man Utd to finish second (looking good), Arsenal to finish third (you did realise that was a joke, right?) and Spurs fourth (quite possible).

I went for Leeds, Blackburn and Luton as winners of divisions two, three and four (two of those three are looking good) and Pompey to finish 10th, which shouldn’t be far off.

And Liverpool to win the FA Cup – can’t win ’em all.

Incidentally, if any of the top-flight trio tipped for the drop take offence at my opening paragraph, well I did say it only applied to two of them...