The Brilliant Championship

Xavi6

http://www.football365.com/story/0,17033,8750_1652241,00.html

Take a look at the Premiership table. Apart from one or two anomalies (Bolton and Portsmouth in the top four, Newcastle in the bottom four), things are pretty much as you would expect. It's business as usual, with the likes of Fulham and Blackburn in mid-table, Citeh just below, and two out of three of the promoted clubs in the relegation zone.

Now look at the Championship table - go on, it's the one below the Premiership one in the newspaper. The top three are Cardiff, Preston and Burnley. What odds would you have got on that unlikely triptych at the start of the season? How many of you can actually name the managers of those three clubs without hesitation?

In the bottom half of said table are Southampton, Sunderland, Norwich, Crystal Palace and Leeds - all of which would have been in the higher echelons of the market for winning the Championship title, and all of which spent well over £1m on players this summer. The punchline, of course, is that none of the top three spent very much at all.

This is a league where Stoke's 5-0 demolition of Norwich was sandwiched between defeats to Southampton and Leicester, where Ipswich can lose 5-0 at home to West Brom and then smack Luton 5-0 two weeks later. And that's the Luton who beat Leeds 5-1 the week before, by the way.

This is a league where Steve Bruce is the longest-serving manager after less than five years in the job and 17 of the 24 clubs have changed their boss in the last 12 months. One of those clubs has a caretaker manager, Sheffield Wednesday's Sean McAuley, and he has seen his side score eight goals in three league matches. The same players scored eight goals in 12 matches before his arrival.

This is a league where 15 of the 24 clubs have had spells in the Premiership, and yet, of the nine clubs who have never reached those heady heights, six are in the top ten. Including, of course, that curious top three.

This is a league where Birmingham have scored 20 goals in 15 matches and are in fourth place, while Barnsley have scored 18 goals in 15 matches and sit next to bottom. And of course the Birmingham fans hate manager Steve Bruce and the Barnsley fans think boss Andy Ritchie can do no wrong.

In short, this is a league that is mental. And brilliant.

On Tuesday night, there were four games that involved five goals or more, there was a team managed by Dennis Wise given a tonking by one managed by Paul Simpson (altogether now, 'oh yes, that's the fella') and two goals scored at Sunderland by a former Newcastle striker playing for a side heading for promotion to the top flight for the first time in 40-odd years.

There are few arguments about clubs parking buses in front of goals to get results, there are few (though there are always some) ridiculous dives and there are no ridiculous mind games (not since Neil Warnock got promoted anyway) because, well, nobody's really that interested in anything but the football really.

It's the league that feeds the big league, and yet it bears absolutely no relation to it. There is no consistency, no adulation for gaining a point in a difficult away game through dubious means and any one of about 15 teams could win the title.

Managers don't keep their jobs if they're not delivering, because there's no massive contract to pay out and no promises of a £10m transfer kitty for new managers. The chairmen - or increasingly the managers - just change if they fancy a change, and it barely gets a mention in the national newspapers.

Of course, you're unlikely to get a Robin van Persie shinned special or a 20-minute exhibition of football in ManYoo style, but the quality ain't half bad. After all, this is the standard of footballer that would have been playing in the Old First Division before the foreign football invasion and people stopped thinking you could eat chips every day for tea. If you liked your football in the Eighties, you'll like the Championship now.

Bolton v Wigan or Watford v Middlesbrough on Saturday? No thanks. I'll be at Sheffield Wednesday v Leicester. And so will 20-odd thousand other people - and they aren't even getting paid to be there...

Sarah Winterburn

MrJoeSoap

Brilliant indeed, a league where you can go one win away from your clubs best run in ten years, then lose five out of the next six games. So extremely unpredictable!

And roughly as many English people turn out to watch their Championship team now as Italians do to support their Serie A club!

thebaz

its certainly a fairly competetive, and even league , where anyone can win -- not too good to beat the bookie on -- its made a great comeback since it nearly died a few years ago when itv 2 collapsed . but still i'm glad everton arn't down there

Rollo Tamasi

leeds for the playoffs! they're only 12 points off 6th! But 3 points off the bottom!

it's a mad league alright.
probably too many games. 24 teams means 46 games each season, add some FA and League runs and you have about 50 games on average for a lot of teams with bare squads. But i suppose they need to do that to keep the finances coming in.

ziggy

This post has been deleted.

Mad Dog

ziggy67 wrote:

The Championship. Competitive yes, brilliant no.

Agreed :cool:

Chucky the tree

Fantastic league. Its a gamblers nightmare though, but thats why i enjoy it so much. Th qualifty obviously isnt as good as the premiership, but the excitment is miles better.


Great article.

Rikand

while you might not have been expecting burnley or cardiff, i definately expected Preston to be there. they have been excellent the last couple of seasons, always knocking on the door and they thoroughly deserve to be near the top of the table again.