Buzzin Championship Football

The first long term issues were settled on Tuesday night: I doubt if anyone was surprised by either of them. Cardiff are in a fantastic position to win the Championship, while Bristol City will finish bottom of the table regardless of what happens before the end of the season.

At a later date I’ll post something about how the fate of both clubs seems to have been dependent on how they differed on some fundamental strategies, but for the moment it’s congratulations to the Bluebirds and commiserations to the Robins.

The first thing about this weekend’s action is that for the second time in five years Hull could be promoted to the Premier League if they beat Bristol City tonight (Sky Sports 1, 7:45pm). Watford would need to beat Blackburn tomorrow afternoon to stand a chance of overtaking the Tigers if Hull fail to win later, but that’s far from guaranteed.

Watford haven’t won at home since the start of last month – their longest streak without a win at Vicarage Road since September – and although their last home game was an uncharacteristic goalless draw with Cardiff, they should get back to winning ways. Blackburn have lost five straight away games and hadn’t scored more than one goal on their travels since winning at Barnsley at the end of December: Jordan Rhodes’ penalty at Hillsborough a few weeks ago was Rovers’ first away goal since Scott Dann’s opener at Brighton – which was two days before Valentine’s Day.

As for the other playoff places, the Curse Of Fourth Place now comes into play. If we assume that Watford have already qualified for the post season, the race for the other three places couldn’t be any tighter and game of the week is between Crystal Palace and Leicester

Like Watford, Palace also haven’t won at home since the start of last month, something that can be attributed to their sudden inability to score goals at Selhurst Park. Since Glenn Murray notched a brace against Leeds, they’ve failed to score twice, which is more or less what they did at this point last season.

If Palace haven’t been dominant at home recently, Leicester have been even worse on their travels. The Foxes haven’t won on the road since they demolished Bristol City 4-0 at Ashton Gate in January and have got to play Watford and Nottingham Forest before the end of the season. At this point I can’t help remembering my comment earlier in the season that the Foxes only did well in the first half of the season because they’d had an easy set of games.

One interesting aspect about this game is how few draws there have been in league matches between these two at Selhurst. Palace’s 2-3 home defeat by Watford on the opening Saturday is the only time they’ve lost to another top six side, but although Leciester haven’t beaten a top six side on the road this season, they’ve drawn three of their four games against those clubs. A point might would be more use for Palace than Leicester, but if Bolton beat Middlesbrough then Leicester could drop out of the top six with two games left to play.

Overall, this looks like a game between two out of form teams who have failed to maintain their form over the last quarter of the season – and I’ll be surprised if either of them play Cardiff next season.

At the bottom the situation is even more confused that I thought it would be. It’s possible that any of the teams in the bottom half of the table could join Bristol City in League 1 next season, although both Millwall and Blackburn have games in hand (they play each other next Tuesday) that could be vital to survival. I think I’ll wait until next week to see how the situation has changed – and it’s bound to change.

Before I go for this week, I’ve seen a couple of articles claiming that there’s unrest in the Championship about the parachute payments. If anything comes of this, I’ll pass it on.