Buzzin Championship Football

Having had a week off and with the headlong dash towards Christmas about to begin, I’m going to take a look back at my predictions for the season this week.

Despite being a quarter of the way through the campaign, it’s remarkable that there have only been three games between the current top six. Although QPR are odds on to win promotion I don’t think they’ve been really tested yet. All but one of their games have been against teams that are currently in the bottom half of the table and if things stay more or less as they are now, Rangers will have very tough sets of games at both Christmas and Easter. Don’t be too surprised if I link back to this post at some point in the future!

Reading, Leicester, Nottingham Forest and Watford are all handily placed right now, but I’d hesistate before calling Burnley a surprise team.  I think it’s fair to say that Sean Dyche was partly responsible for Watford’s resurgence a couple of seasons ago and that his work at Turf Moor won’t go unnoticed by some of the bigger clubs in England.

For me the biggest surprise at the top of the table so far how well Blackpool have done. I’d also not rule out Wigan at this point but a lot depends on how the Europa League develops. They meet tomorrow lunchtime at Bloomfield Road (Sky Sports 1, 12:15pm) and although it should be a decent game, I wouldn’t expect lots of goals. If you want a stat to amaze your friends with tonight, none of the eight Saturday lunchtime kick offs this season have been won by the home team and only one of those games has produced more than two goals.

At the bottom Sheffield Wednesday and Barnsley are doing about as well as I thought they would. The Tykes have been a poor side for some time and  are currently on pace to concede over 100 goals this season. In Barnsley’s defence they’ve won precisely one more match than Wednesday have – and with neighbours Sheffield United struggling in League Two, this is beginning to look like a poor season for the Steel City.

I’m going to admit that my forecast for Yeovil looks as if it was unjustifiably optimistic so I’m going to make another: that the Glovers and Barnsley may well find themselves adrift at the bottom of the Championship at the beginning of 2014, leaving one relegation spot to be fought over.

Surprise strugglers: Charlton. I thought they’d shown enough at the end of last season to progress into a team that’s capable of challenging for the playoffs at the very least, but they look like one of those frustrating outfits that are capable of playing well against superior opponents yet badly against poor sides and that can sometimes indicate a dramatic decline may be round the corner.  Having said that they’re only five points worse off than they were this time last season so they may not be struggling for long, but we’ll see.

The top two are both away on Saturday afternoon, which gives the group immediately behind them a chance to catch up. If either of them slip up, Leicester could move into the automatic promotion places with a win over Huddersfield but as we’ve seen in the past this is exactly the type of game that makes the Championship unpredictable.

The weekend finishes with Birmingham playing Leeds on Sunday lunchtime (Sky Sports 1, 1:15pm) which is yet another example of Sky Sports picking a game that looked attractive on paper before the season started. Both clubs are in the bottom half of the table – the Blues are only four points away from the relegation zone – but Leeds have only beaten Birmingham once in the last five meetings in Yorkshire since 2003.

I’ll be back next week, but there’s little doubt what the game of the week will be: Burnley v QPR.