How to display magento product categories in column wise

I'm trying to display all the categories below the main title, so I want to display four categories in each column. The below is my code

<?php
    $_category  = $this->getCurrentCategory();
    $collection = Mage::getModel('catalog/category')->getCategories($_category->entity_id);
    $helper     = Mage::helper('catalog/category');
?>
<ul class="pull-left">
<?php foreach ($collection as $cat):?>
    <li>
       <a style="color:#fff;" href="<?php echo $helper->getCategoryUrl($cat);?>">
          <cite><?php echo $cat->getName();?><?php
 ?></cite>
        </a>
    </li>
<?php endforeach;?>
</ul>

HTML Output

<ul class="pull-left">
    <li>....</li>
    <li>....</li>
    <li>....</li>
    <li>....</li>
    <li>....</li>
    <li>....</li>
    <li>....</li>
    <li>....</li>
    .
    .
    .
    .
</ul>

I want to define four li items in every ul. Like this

<ul class="pull-left">
    <li>...</li>
    <li>...</li>
    <li>...</li>
    <li>...</li>
</ul>
<ul class="pull-left">
    <li>...</li>
    <li>...</li>
    <li>...</li>
    <li>...</li>
</ul>

I also want to display product count and I've tried this

<?php 
    $products_count = Mage::getModel('catalog/category')->load($categoryId)->getProductCount();
?>

but it is not working.