City’s recent burst of form has been noted by the nation’s bookies, who’ve moved the Tigers from favourites for relegation to, err, second favourites. 4/6 is the longest any of them are prepared to offer on Phil Brown’s resurgent charges tumbling Championshipwards – by contrast, Totesport are willing to quote 11/8 on us achieving a third successive season in the Premier League.

That’s still an improvement of sorts, however. City were as short as 1/3 to take a spill in the aftermath of the Burnley defeat. The shortest price belongs to Portsmouth, who now have that prohibitively skinny price themselves. Their situation is beginning to parallel West Brom’s last season, whereby they seemed unable to put together any kind of run to offer encouragement of an escape. It’s not worth tying your cash up on such a short price, but the omens are not good.

Elsewhere, the promoted duo of Wolves and Burnley provide the next two best chances in the eyes of the bookmakers. Wolves are 8/11 for an instant return to the second tier, a prospect significantly increased in likelihood following their disappointing loss at home to Birmingham on Sunday. Burnley’s remarkable start hasn’t impressed the compilers, none of whom will go over 15/8 on the story of 2009/10 not having a happy ending.

As with last season, plenty of other teams are in danger. Bolton, Birmingham, West Ham, Wigan and Blackburn all have prices in single figures – plenty of encouragement for City with numerous plausible candidates for relegation. If pushed, this column would suggest that City are a better bet at 11/8 for survival than 4/6 to go down, though much depends on the fitness of key players – without Gardner and Bullard the situation would be very different.

Nonetheless, our marvellous mini-run means Phil Brown is out of immediate danger, a fact reflected in him no longer being the favourite to be the next Premier League dismissal. That distinctly dubious honour falls to Gary Megson, struggling with a toxic combination of personal unpopularity and poor results at Bolton – he’s as short as 5/4 to be handed a P45 next. We’ll be previewing Aston Villa later in the week – but it’s fair to say we’ll be looking forward to our weekend fixture a lot more than many of the sides near us in the table.