Burton, Scunthorpe or Peterborough – who’ll join Sunderland, Barnsley, Charlton and Portsmouth?

UPDATE: we saw the poll had grown, improbably, to 11,000+ votes with Coventry way out in front on 26 per cent. Couldn’t blame Jimmy Hill this time but something was clearly up.  For the culprits, go to the Coventry site Sky Blues Talk    … but don’t get too cross as our lot would gladly have done the same to them. The poll, unsurprisingly, is suspended …

After Colin reposted our “who’s going up?” poll (on the left, below) in one of the Question and Answer sessions  with our owners there  was brief flurry of voting, as you might have expected given the number of visitors we had. And then things slowed down until, by the weekend, things were at a trickle, although votes were and are still coming in. Again, this was to be expected as the eyes of the football world were on Russia, where eight or nine ex-Sunderland players were taking part in the World’s most prestigious competition outside the Third Division. We now have over 800 votes cast, which is enough to be going on with, although Colin in his gut feeling poll, had almost as many when only one vote was allowed per person.

The additional votes haven’t brought much of a change. The top four favourites have remained where they were – no surprises there – with percentage votes showing little variation over the week. It’s the next group that I’m focusing on this time.

During that week Burton Albion climbed into our top six, as did Peterborough, and Luton Town and Scunthorpe United moved down to make room for them. But when I began this update while killing time waiting for the England-Sweden kick off (i.e just over another week later) Luton had staged a comeback and had even edged past Portsmouth:

Such movement is to be expected with small numbers. A few votes can generate quite a swing, and when numbers are very small, can be enough to move clubs a fair way. You might remember my comment about Walsall and their “Nil Points” situation right back at the beginning. Walsall are now sitting mid table and at the time of writing Rochdale are battling Wycombe for the honour of coming bottom, and they have been doing so for a while.

Which, I think, is an irrelevance. I can’t see Rochdale or Wycombe  overtaking any of the top four clubs and bagging a spot in our ones to watch list. It’s possible as a few votes can work wonders, but unless new voter(s) decide to cast vote(s) for  only one team and to throw rationality to the winds – and why not, it’s what football’s all about – I think that two of Burton, Scunny or Posh will be joining Sunderland, Barnsley, Charlton and Portsmouth in being dodgified.

We’ll see. The Poll remains open and will do so for another three weeks or so.

So over to the fans….

…if you can tear your eyes away from Moscow and Jordans one and two.

McCormick’s dodgy numbers. The arithmetic’s correct, it’s just the rest could be a bit iffy