With the start of each new football season, football fans from in and around Staffordshire will take a look at their beloved teams’ odds for promotion and relegation. Bookmakers rarely get things horribly wrong, so it’s often used as a decent indicator of how their team will fare in the forthcoming season. Well, if you are a betting person, you may already know that the odds of Stoke City, Port Vale or Crewe Alexandra winning the league in 2006/07 are extremely high. Potteries-based betting firm Bet365 have Stoke priced at 66/1 to win the Championship, even though their owner Peter Coates has just taken over the club! Crewe are around 20-1 to win the league while you can get double that if you fancy Port Vale. Some brave fans of course are prepared to put their money where their mouth is and have a bet on the team they support. Whereas others are much more superstitious and prefer not to tempt fate! We sent our Blast (BBC junior reporter scheme) reporter Phil Cartwright to find out how the odds are calculated; what bookmakers think about our local teams’ chances; and what managers think of their odds for going up, the drop or for the chop... | 
