Forest can cut down rivals...
DOES anyone want to claim those final Championship play-off berths? It certainly doesn’t look like it to me.
Bristol City, Derby County, Nottingham Forest, Birmingham City - they’ve all got the capacity to go on a decent run. Unfortunately, they’ve also got a losing streak in there too.
Derby started well, now, pre-weekend, it’s three wins in 12. Birmingham notched only two wins in ten over Christmas. Bristol City got two wins in 11, then went unbeaten in 13 matches. It’s just so inconsistent.
Here’s my assessment of the runners and riders - including the outsider I’m backing to come up on the rails.
MIDDLESBROUGH Pre-weekend position - 5th
Boro are a certainty for me, despite their problems in front of goal. Jordan Hugill and Britt Assombalonga should be good, solid Championship strikers but neither has found the net on a regular basis.
They also draw too many games, which is why their title-challenge has fallen away since Christmas.
But they have bags of experience, the best defence in the EFL and a manager in Tony Pulis with the know-how of getting over the line.
That will see them into the top six and, once you’re in twolegged play-off games, draws and clean sheets are the key to success.
When I got promoted from League One with Brighton, we had Leon Knight up front but no other real source of goals.
But we kept seven clean sheets in a row going into the play-offs, which was a club record. You kind of thought ‘We’ll go away from home, get a clean sheet, try to nick a goal’. And that was exactly what we did.
We didn’t score a goal in 90 minutes over the two legs. I scored in extra-time, then we won the final 1-0 on a penalty. Hartlepool and Bristol City were much better football teams than us, but we had a solid base that saw us through. Boro are cut from similar cloth.
BRISTOL CITY Pre-weekend position - 6th
Lee Johnson has done a really good job at Ashton Gate. Two defeats in a row heading into yesterday’s game at Preston is a slight wobble, and their confidence will have been knocked by the Norwich game, when they lost 3-2 having been 2-1 up. On the plus side, there’s no real pressure. At the start of the season, a top ten-finish would have been decent return for them. That said, City’s current position represents a major overachievement and I’m not sure they can maintain that level of quality or performance until May.
DERBY COUNTY Pre-weekend position - 7th
Derby surprised plenty of pundits in August and September by getting off to a flyer. Over the piece, however, it’s started to look like the transitional season many of us expected.
They’ve gone from the direct style of Gary Rowett to the passing style of Frank Lampard. An experienced squad with an average of 31 has given way to youngsters like Harry Wilson, Mason Mount and Jayden Bogle. It was always going to be hard.
They’ve also been in the play-offs in three of the last five seasons and failed every time. It’s a bit like England and penalty shoot-outs - you’ve become so conditioned to disappointment that every time one rolls round it’s like ‘Here we go again’. You’re almost beaten before you begin.
They’ve got good players Martyn Waghorn, Wilson, Jack Marriott - and I think they’d have taken sixth place at the start.
Will they get it? I’m not convinced - and that’s no bad thing because I don’t think Derby’s squad is ready for the Premier League.
I remember talking to Neil Harris at Wembley after Millwall beat Bradford to win the League One play-off final in 2017. He was happy of course, but he was immediately worried that he didn’t have the squad to survive.
And as we’ve seen with Slavisa Jokanovic at Fulham, if you go up unprepared, you can end up out of a job. The same thing could easily happen to Frank, which would be a disaster for his development.
BIRMINGHAM CITY Pre-weekend position - 8th
All season they’ve lived under the cloud of a looming points deduction for breaching Financial Fair Play regulations, but it doesn’t seem to have affected the players. That’s great credit to Garry Monk.
Garry has gone in there, implemented a simple style of play and basically got rid of all the gripes and excuses.
That Rowett shouldn’t have been sacked, that Steve Cotterill was a bad choice, that Harry Redknapp spent all the money. He’s put the focus back on football.
He’s got the best out of Lukas Jutkiewicz, he’s got Jota back to his best and he’s got a striker in Che Adams who looks Premier League class.
And the good thing with Birmingham is that they never go on a losing streak. They grind away and grind away. The points keep stacking up.
Even on that run of two wins in ten, they didn’t lose many. Keep that up and they’ve got an outside chance - points deduction allowing, of course.
NOTTINGHAM FOREST Pre-weekend position - 9th
Forest are the lowest of all the teams on this list - but if I had to put money on any of them seizing sixth spot, it would be the side managed by Martin O’Neill. The victory over Derby on Monday is the sort of result that can spark a season into life. You saw what it meant to the players afterwards and, in a division where momentum is everything, that matters. Suddenly, it’s like everybody believes again. Martin has great experience. He’s got an outstanding goalie in Costel Pantilimon. Joe Lolley is having the season of his life. I remember seeing him at Kidderminster years ago and thinking ‘Who is that?’ - He was just on a different level. They’ve got a couple of clean sheets, one of the best squads in the division. It just seems to be clicking at the right time.