Action heats up in Premier League race
Although Wolverhampton Wanderers appear to already have one hand on the Championship title, unless they suffer a major meltdown, there is a battle royal building up as to who will join them for a place in next season’s Premier League.
Just one point separates three famous teams vying for the second automatic place with Aston Villa currently edging Derby County and Cardiff City. Of course two of those teams won’t get the automatic slot and will face a stiff challenge from a host of clubs vying for the play-offs.
Only four points separate fifth placed Fulham and Middlesbrough in ninth, with Bristol City, Preston North End and Sheffield United all in the mix. There are still enough games for a quartet of the stronger mid-table teams like Brentford, Leeds United, Ipswich Town and Norwich City to make a late run for the play-offs.
Because of the rich rewards that go with gaining promotion to the top flight, the Championship is something of a cut-throat league. Failure isn’t tolerated. This might explain why so far this season eight Championship clubs have parted ways with their managers. That’s one third of the clubs. However there is still a little way to go before they overtake last season’s Championship casualties which numbered 15.
The latest departure was in fact not a sacking. Paul Heckingbottom, only four days after signing a new contract with Barnsley, left the club to take over the job at Leeds United following the dismissal of Thomas Christiansen. Leeds have been through seven managers in three years and it will be intriguing if Heckingbottom can succeed where so many others have failed.
December was a bad month for Championship managers with four sackings — Leonid Slutsky (Hull City), Garry Monk (Middlesbrough), Carlos Carvalhal (Sheffield Wednesday) and Mark Warburton (Nottingham Forest). Carvalhal quickly moved to take over the reins at Swansea City and has so far done a decent job.
The other two Championship managerial casualties earlier in the season were Harry Redknapp at Birmingham City and Simon Grayson at Sunderland. Grayson is now managing League One promotion hopefuls Bradford City.
The in-form team at the moment appears to be Aston Villa who enjoyed their seventh straight victory last weekend with a comfortable 3-0 win against Birmingham. Manager Steve Bruce has had to work hard to win over Villa fans, but they won’t complain if they can achieve automatic promotion.
One of Villa’s rivals for that cherished second spot could be Fulham who are themselves enjoying a good run of form. Fulham happen to be at home to Villa today in arguably the biggest Championship game of the weekend. It is a particularly crucial period for Fulham who after Villa have a series of difficult matches against Bristol City, Wolves, Derby and Sheffield United.
Cardiff are another team with high hopes of automatic promotion and manager Neil Warnock will be looking for a home victory today against inconsistent Middlesbrough.
For some big clubs, however, this season is more about and avoiding the drop into League One. Sunderland’s woes have been well documented and they currently sit in an uncomfortable 23rd place, only one point above bottom rung Burton Albion.
When former Wales manager Chris Coleman made the surprise move to take on the Sunderland job in November there were high hopes that he might be able to turn the season around for the Black Cats. But it has not happened.
However, there is a ray of hope. Last weekend they were 3-0 down at Bristol City at half-time and being played off the park. Somehow they managed to recover in the second half to come away with a highly unlikely 3-3 draw. Unfortunately many Sunderland fans had left Ashton Gate in disgust before their team’s unexpected revival began in the 70th minute.
You never know, that fortuitous recovery might just spark something. A home win against Brentford today might even see the Stadium of Light rocking, something seldom witnessed this season.
Just four points above Sunderland lie Birmingham City in 20th place. Having narrowly escaped relegation last season, with a little help from Harry Redknapp, City fans were hoping for something better this time around under Steve Cotterill. But after last weekend’s loss to Villa, the manager admitted: “The bottom line is that we weren’t quite good enough.”
However, before the Villa game City had been showing improved form so they will hope to get back to their winning ways at home to Millwall today.
Burton Albion remain favourites to go down, but this small club has already done remarkably well to reach the Championship in the first place and stay there for two seasons. The Brewers were only promoted to League Two in 2009 after taking the Conference title and they went on to win the division in 2015 under manager Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink.
Nigel Clough, who enjoyed a hugely successful decade with Burton in their non-league days, returned to the club in 2015 and remarkably took them to second place in League One and automatic promotion to the Championship for back-to-back promotions.
Considering their Pirelli Stadium has a capacity of only 6,912 with just 2,000 seats, they were relegation favourites all season, but managed to survive, finishing in 20th place, one point above the relegation zone.
Whether Clough can keep them up this season remains to be seen. It’s going to be a really tough job. They have a shocking home record, having picked up only one point in their last 10 games at the Pirelli and a dreadful goal difference of minus 34. But if there is anyone who can save them it is Clough.