Carlisle United don't just have to improve on their recent form to stay in League One - they also have to defy the dreaded 'Supercomputer'.

Number crunchers have released their latest predictions for the third tier.

And on current form the forecasted table sees the Cumbrians in a relegation place by the narrowest of margins come the end of the season.

The mathematical simulator has United in 23rd position, three points adrift of safety, after 46 games.

The Supercomputer, run by bookmaker BetVictor, calculates that United's chances of going back down to the fourth tier have increased from 39.7 per cent to 55.2 per cent after recent defeats.

The predicted table has Cheltenham Town finishing bottom, followed by Carlisle United, and Port Vale and Reading also going down in the bottom four and Shrewsbury Town narrowly surviving in 20th.

United are predicted to finish on 45 points with a -19 goal difference.

They currently sit 22nd with 14 points from 17 games, and a goal difference of -7.

The Blues do not have a game this weekend with their trip to Barnsley postponed because of the Yorkshire side's international call-ups.

The 'Supercomputer', meanwhile, predicts Bolton Wanderers to win the title ahead of Portsmouth, with Barnsley, Peterborough United, Derby County and Oxford United to make the play-offs.

BetVictor say their 'supercomputer' adopts the Monte Carlo method involving a match simulator that uses two Poisson distributions – one for the home team and one for the away team – to anticipate the number of goals each team could score in a match.

Their match simulator is run 10,000 times to predict the outcomes of a full season's fixtures, with average standings and probabilities then produced.