Here’s a question to put everybody on the spot - how many penalty kicks would the average Football League team expect to be awarded in a season? Seven or eight at most?

After 24 League and Cup matches, they might expect, say, five spot kicks in their favour. OK, perhaps I’m being a little generous.

The reason I raise  these questions is because there seem to be no stats about penalties anywhere on the web. Yet I’ve been struck by the amazing number of pens that my team, Cardiff City, have been awarded this term.

According to my records, they’ve had ELEVEN, a rate of almost one every other game - and converted nine of them. And no fewer than five came in just five games prior to last night's trip to fellow promotion contenders Burnley.

Most of that handful were won by Michael Chopra, whose return to Ninian Park on loan from Sunderland has helped to propel the Bluebirds into the play-off pack. His arrival was sparked by an injury to the club’s new penalty king Ross McCormack, half of whose 14 senior goals this season have come from the spot.

When McCormack, a £120,000 bargain signing from Motherwell, tweaked a hamstring last month, former Bluebirds idol Chops was recruited on a two-month loan - and immediately took over the penalty duties.

He quickly generated two in one game against Crystal Palace, scoring one and then missing the second in the dying moments as Cardiff clung on to a 2-1 win.

Three more have come in the last three games before last night - against Reading, Swansea and Preston, the returning McCormack netting two and Chopra the third after McCormack had gone off injured.

The surfeit of penalties has got me asking two questions. One, why is it that some clubs tend to generate more of them than others, and two, is there really an ART in winning a spot kick?  No club would admit it, but do some managers perhaps ‘teach’ their forwards to stumble, rather than dive, something which Chopra in particular seems to have become a dab hand at?

I watched the Crystal Palace v Southampton match on Monday  night and saw one Saints forward dive so theatrically early on that had I been the ref, I would have immediately said to myself, ‘If that guy goes down 100 times in the box tonight, there is no way I am going to give a pen’.

I'm sure that forwards who go to ground dramatically at the slightest contact have far LESS chance of winning penalties than the honest guys who try to ride contact situations whenever possible.

Having said that, have you ever seen a spot kick awarded to a forward who is fouled but does NOT go to ground? Clearly, refs are much more likely to be convinced by the fall guys who don’t make a meal of it.

Palace boss Neil Warnock wasn’t impressed by the way Chopra won his first penalty against his side.  In fact, he accused him of conning referee Jonathan Moss. The blunt-speaking Yorkshireman insisted: “There was no contact. Chopra realised he had not got anywhere, saw Patrick McCarthy coming across, stumbled and hoped for the best as he went down.

“You get your reward sometimes. That’s why he is a Premier League player at Sunderland. You have to use every advantage in your armoury. ''

Exactly, Neil. You're spot-on there.