Buzzin Championship Football

The Sky Bet Championship returns after one of the most pointless international breaks we’ve had to tolerate since I began writing for this blog three years ago.

At one point a fortnight ago it looked as if there might be more surprises than there actually were: Burnley were six minutes away from losing their unbeaten home record but it was saved when Danny Ings scored an equaliser against Bournemouth. Leicester and Blackpool both suffered their first home defeats of the season:  the Foxes  lost at the King Power Stadium since April as Forest successfully defended a two goal half time lead and Ipswich took all three points at Bloomfield Road for the first time since November 2008 with a last gasp winner from Daryl Murphy.

One intriguing story that’s broken since I last posted is the apparent £60 million fine that QPR face due to the ‘Financial Fair Play’ rules. Over the past few seasons Rangers have acquired a reputation for overspending as well as sailing close to the rules and although the fine sounds enormous, it’s highly unlikely to be enforced. If QPR are promoted this season, they’ll have to pay it in 2015 – which would probably still mean they’d make a profit from the money they’d earn from the Premier League. If they aren’t, it’ll probably just be a transfer embargo. I’m not going to make any further comment on this story for the foreseable future as it strikes me that these measures are pretty toothless and won’t be applied evenly. Wait until a club from League 1 or League 2 gets into trouble.

Back to events on the pitch. Leicester and QPR will overtake Burnley if they beat Ipswich and Charlton on Saturday and the Clarets fail to gain a point at Nottingham Forest, but although the order at the top of the table could change, the chasing pack – led by Blackpool – are still at least five points off the pace. Both Derby and Leeds are in good form at the moment, while Reading and Watford have been indifferent over the last few games.

The bottom of the table is still clogged up, but with four of the bottom six clubs facing each other at the weekend the situation might become a lot more fluid.

One surprising fact at the current bottom six is that although they’ve met eight times this season, not one of those games has ended in a home win. Admittedly Doncaster and Yeovil have yet to play any of their relegation rivals at home yet – that’ll change on Friday – but both Sheffield Wednesday and Barnsley have failed to win any of the three home games they’ve played against the other strugglers. At least Wednesday have a reliable goalscorer, even though Matty Fryatt is on loan from Hull.

Yeovil will be looking forward to their trip to the Keepmoat on Friday (Sky Sports 1, 7:45pm) as they haven’t lost any of their previous five visits. Having only earned two points from eighteen available since beating Millwall in August, a win for Yeovil would be a major boost for morale although they cannot escape the bottom three. Rovers have had a tough start to the season – they’ve already played four of the current top six at home – and this is the type of game they need to win in order to put some breathing space between them and the teams around them.

Millwall host Barnsley on Saturday: the Tykes’ record in South London isn’t as good as Yeovil’s performances have been at Doncaster, but they’ve only lost three of their seven trips to the New Den since it opened just over 20 years ago. Having said that, the Lions haven’t lost at home since being thrashed by Derby in mid September and with eight different players scoring in their four home games since then it looks as if manager Steve Lomas might have solved some of Millwall’s issues at the moment.

There’s one catch up game next Tuesday: the long range weather forecast in South London doesn’t indicate the type of torrential rain that caused Charlton’s game against Doncaster to be abandoned at the end of August. Rovers were leading 3-1 when referee Lee Collins made the decision to end the game at half time.

I’ll be back next Friday – hard to believe that November has flown by so quickly and the Christmas period is almost upon us.