Bookies drop Swansea’s promotion odds to 4/1

SWANSEA City and Cardiff City suffered back-to-back defeats over Easter weekend to ensure their respective promotion hopes took a huge hit.

The Swans were beaten 1-0 by both Birmingham City and Preston North End while the Bluebirds were thrashed 5-0 by Sheffield Wednesday after losing 1-0 to Nottingham Forest.

Swansea now sit in fourth spot and are 10 points adrift of second-placed Watford with seven games left to play.

They could be forgiven for looking over their shoulders, too, given that seventh-placed Bournemouth are now only four points behind Steve Cooper’s side.

And the Swans have now dropped to odds of 4/1 with Sky Bet to be promoted this season.

The company is no longer taking bets on leaders Norwich City to go up, while Watford are the firm second favourites (1/8) to be in the Premier League next term.

Brentford (1/1) and Bournemouth (3/1) are both fancied over Swansea to gain promotion this season, while Barnsley (9/2) and Reading (9/1) are the other two sides bookies think are realistically still in the mix.

As for Mick Mccarthy’s Cardiff, they are now the 80/1 eighth favourites to gain promotion from the second tier after their losses over the weekend, results that leave them eight points off the play-off places with just six matches left to play.

At the other end of the table, Wycombe Wanderers’ survival hopes have already been written off by bookmakers.

Sheffield Wednesday and Rotherham United are the two sides tipped to join Wycombe in dropping to League One.

How the table is predicted to look using latest promotion and relegation odds from Sky Bet:

1 Norwich City (no promotion odds offered) 2 Watford (1/8 to be promoted) 3 Brentford (1/1 to be promoted) 4 Bournemouth (3/1 to be promoted) 5 Swansea City (4/1 to be promoted) 6 Barnsley (9/2 to be promoted) 7 Reading (9/1 to be promoted) 8 Cardiff City (80/1 to be promoted) 9 Middlesbrough (200/1 to be promoted) 10 Millwall (750/1 to be promoted) 11 Stoke City (1000/1 to be promoted) 12 QPR (1500/1 to be promoted) 13 Luton (2000/1 to be promoted) 14 Notts Forest (250/1 to be relegated) 15 Preston (100/1 to be relegated) 16 Bristol City (100/1 to be relegated) 17 Blackburn (50/1 to be relegated) 18 Huddersfield (9/1 to be relegated) 19 Derby (11/2 to be relegated) 20 Coventry City (5/1 to be relegated) 21 Birmingham (2/1 to be relegated) 22 Rotherham (5/6 to be relegated) 23 Sheffield Wednesday (1/5 to be relegated) 24 Wycombe Wdrs (no odds offered on relegation)