United Close in on (a) Title

The problem with top of the table deciders is that, in Promroiship terms, they always end up in draws. Luckily, however, in the Promroiship, Chelsea have fallen well behind Manchester United over the weeks as the BBC (and everyone else) regarded Arsenal as the title challengers. Yesterdays big match ended up with Manchester United returning to the top of the Promroiship and looking likely to win the inaugural Promroiship title.

Reading, however, are putting up a great challenge, only conceding seven points to Manchester United after their nil-nil bore draw with Wigan featured fifth on Match of the Day, but ended getting the second highest Promroiship score of the day. With the running order being decided more by the effect on the important parts of the Premier League table rather than the quality of the matches (or number of goals scored), we saw some high scoring matches being left very late on with the last two not actually scoring any points in the Promroiship; they might as well have stayed at home. Even Gary Lineker remarked upon this as he presented the last match, a meaningless mid-table fixture between West Ham and Newcastle. Given this, the running order yesterday probably could not be faulted unless you live in the North East and had to wait until the penultimate match to see an exciting local derby between Sunderland and Middlesborough.

Just to remind you, weekly points are calculated using the formula (m-g)*n where

m is the points for position in the running order (10 for appearing in first match, 9 for second etc)
g is the number of goals in match
n is the number of Premier League matches on MOTD

Promroiship Results April 26th 2008 (Match of the Day Running Order)

Chelsea v Manchester United...49
Manchester City v Fulham......28
Birmingham City v Liverpool...28
Tottenham Hotspur v Bolton....35
Wigan Athletic v Reading......42
Sunderland v Middlesborough....0
West Ham v Newcastle United....0

The Promroiship Table after Round 17

Manchester United ...510*
Reading .............505*
Arsenal .............469
Fulham ..............470*
Birmingham City......405*
Chelsea .............395*
Bolton Wanderers ....382*
Tottenham Hotspur....375*
West Ham United......368*
Sunderland ..........357*
Newcastle United.....347*
Manchester City .....335*
Liverpool ...........327*
Middlesbrough .......322*
Portsmouth ..........300
Wigan Athletic ......298*
Aston Villa .........290
Everton .............289
Blackburn Rovers.....253
Derby County.........219

* indicates match played in Round 17