Buzzin Championship Football

Having reached the halfway point of the nPower Championship season, one of the recurring themes has been the inability of both of the South Wales clubs to take advantage whenever QPR have failed to win. This happened again last weekend: despite losing 2-0 at Leeds, QPR will be top at Christmas, although to be fair to Cardiff their game against Burnley was postponed.

Last week’s talking point happened at Portman Road. Four games had already been postponed and arguably Leicester’s trip to Ipswich should have been abandoned. With the hosts leading 3-0 midway through the second half, referee Stuart Atwell made the decision to order both sides back to the changing rooms while the snow was cleared from the pitch, a decision that prompted speculation that the game would have been abandoned if Sky cameras hadn’t been there.

The situation at the bottom didn’t change that after last weekend’s games but there’s now a four point gap between Sheffield United and Middlesbrough that could be crucial going into the holiday period – with four games in a ten day period it’s almost inevitable that there will be changes, especially as there are a number of top six versus bottom six encounters.

The Boxing Day programme features a couple of interesting 1:00pm kick offs. Swansea have never won at QPR in the league but have drawn six of the last ten games at Loftus Road. Crystal Palace have already beaten Norwich this season and the Canaries haven’t won at Selhurst Park in their last twelve trips, so there could be a potential upset in South London. The most interesting of the 3:00pm Boxing Day kick offs is Preston’s trip to Scunthorpe – the Iron won at Deepdale in October, but both teams need to improve as if they don’t, their next meeting may be in League 1.

After a whole day off (so much for the winter break), competition resumes on Tuesday afternoon when QPR visit Coventry (Sky Sports 1, 12:00pm) in a fixture that hasn’t produced many goals over the last few seasons, but once again the key games will be at the bottom of the table. Palace travel to Bristol City for the first time since the game where they had a perfectly good goal ruled out in August 2009: Preston host Middlesbrough, whom they haven’t beaten in the league since April 1972 – it would be wrong to read too much into that fact as Boro have only played three league games at Deepdale since then.

As the transfer window is re-opening on New Years Day, the usual ridiculous transfer rumours have started floating around, although at time of writing only two deals had been confirmed: Liverpool signed Millwall’s 16 year old goalkeeper Yusuf Mersin and Garry O’Connor has made his move to Barnsley from Birmingham City permanent. Doncaster Rovers have given Sheffield United permission to speak to Sean O’Driscoll, but at best that looks like a sideways move and United may have to look elsewhere for a new manager.