Buzzin Championship Football

A rather disappointing week in the Capital One Cup too: despite a Herculean effort at St Andrew’s by Birmingham City, only Leicester got through to the next round.

The Blues looked done for after Wade Elliott had been dismissed just before half time and were losing 1-3 with twenty minutes to go before two goals from veteren striker Peter Lovenkrands sent the tie into extra time. Despite falling behind again in extra time, Oliver Lee equalised and unfortunately for the hosts they went out on penalties after teenager Mitch Hancox hit the bar.

Almost the opposite happened 40 miles to the east: after 53 minutes, Leicester had stormed into a 3-1 lead over Fulham, but the Premier League side thought they’d taken taken the tie to extra time after Giorgos Karagounis had levelled the scores with four minutes remaining. Enter Lloyd Dyer: Leicester will play Manchester City in the next round at the King Power Stadium in mid December. In the other tie, current leaders Burnley surrendered rather tamely to West Ham.

With all but two of the Sky Bet Championship clubs concentrating on the league until January – Wigan are doing fine in the Europa League – let’s have a look at how things stand. If it was a good week for Leicester, then it’s been a bad one for QPR – the Hoops have taken one point from the last six available, haven’t scored in the last two games and have dropped out of the top two for the first time since the end of August. The bottom of the table is still tight, but Bolton are starting to show signs of life: they’ve not lost since September.

On paper, the game of the week is at the City Ground, where two of the playoff contenders meet. Nottingham Forest and Blackpool are only a point apart but anyone expecting some early fireworks between these sides could be disappointed as this game has low scoring draw written all over it.  Six of the last ten games in Nottingham between these clubs have been draws and Blackpool haven’t scored more than one goal at the City Ground since February 1962. The Tangerines are difficult to beat right now, but have drawn five of their last six games. Additionally they haven’t won on their travels since beating Bournemouth in mid September and haven’t won at Forest for just over four years.

To emphasise those stats, neither club have been firing on all cylinders recently. Despite not being out of the top six since the start of the season, Forest won precisely once in October and haven’t won in front of their own fans since the victory over Derby at the end of September. This is also their first game against this season’s promotion contenders: Blackpool have already beaten Reading and drawn with Leicester but both of those games were at Bloomfield Road.

Other games to look out for include Charlton at Birmingham and Sheffield Wednesday against Reading. It’ll be interesting to see how the Blues respond to their midweek exertions: in their six league games in the Midlands against the Addicks since the turn of the century they’ve only won once. City have done relatively well against the other strugglers so far this season and although Charlton won at Blackburn in their last away trip, that’s been their only success on the road in six attempts this season.

Sheffield Wednesday’s last home win was in May and although they played well enough to dig themselves out of last season’s hole, they need to start getting results now to prevent a similar struggle this term. Reading are rare visitors to Hillsborough – despite joining the Football League in 1920 tomorrow’s game will be only the Royals’ seventh game there – and Wednesday have failed to win the last three meetings. The visitors haven’t won away from the Madejski since September, but due to the disruption of the World Cup qualifiers this is their first away game for almost a month.