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The Championship, Expect the Expected


mozo

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There's been a lot of talk about the impact of Covid in football. With the absence of crowds, an unfamiliar schedule and congested fixture list, and across Europe we see unexpected league leaders, with clubs like PSG, Bayern and Barcelona all underperforming. 

But with nearly half a season gone, taking a look at the Championship league table poses few surprises. 

The three sides relegated from the Premier League in the late finishing 2019-20 season are sitting pretty in positions 1, 2 and 3. 

The playoff race features Swansea and Brentford. No surprise there.

Stoke and Boro look more solid this season, as expected. Millwall, Cardiff and Blackburn in mid table.

Most predictable of all is City, who have found their rightful position of 8th!

The only discernible anomalies are overacheivers Reading, and underperforming Derby and Forest, however form tells us that all three are reverting to type.

So is this league the anomaly for not being an anomaly?

Has Covid even had an impact on results?

I'm going to submit before some of tonight's fixtures so if Reading beat Norwich 9-0 I'll look a right plonker...

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5 minutes ago, mozo said:

There's been a lot of talk about the impact of Covid in football. With the absence of crowds, an unfamiliar schedule and congested fixture list, and across Europe we see unexpected league leaders, with clubs like PSG, Bayern and Barcelona all underperforming. 

But with nearly half a season gone, taking a look at the Championship league table poses few surprises. 

The three sides relegated from the Premier League in the late finishing 2019-20 season are sitting pretty in positions 1, 2 and 3. 

The playoff race features Swansea and Brentford. No surprise there.

Stoke and Boro look more solid this season, as expected. Millwall, Cardiff and Blackburn in mid table.

Most predictable of all is City, who have found their rightful position of 8th!

The only discernible anomalies are overacheivers Reading, and underperforming Derby and Forest, however form tells us that all three are reverting to type.

So is this league the anomaly for not being an anomaly?

Has Covid even had an impact on results?

I'm going to submit before some of tonight's fixtures so if Reading beat Norwich 9-0 I'll look a right plonker...

I blame Trevor

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25 minutes ago, Major Isewater said:

We beat a Blackburn side who were compared to us in style and then lost abysmally to Rotherham.

If they can do it why couldn’t we ?

 

It doesn’t work like that. Whoever’s on a losing streak and then plays us will win. They then go on a losing streak again! 
 

We always seem to have that type of affect on crap teams? 

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3 minutes ago, Littlesh*t said:

Man U won the European cup and finish near the top of the league in the Prem most seasons. We beat them the other year so why aren't we competing at that level?

 

 

My comment is  about style of play. We struggle against roughhouse sides whilst pretending to be an exciting, open attacking side , everyone said we were like Blackburn who overcame those tactics when we couldn’t, why ?

 

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1 hour ago, Denbury Red said:

It doesn’t help that we have probably more injuries than most teams we are playing.

The ones who are playing are knackered!

I'm not buying the injuries as an excuse to the levels of performance - the fit players are better than what has been offered up.  We had 5 full internationals in the starting 11, and 2 on the bench.  

As for the rest being knackered, Millwall had 3 outfield players in their team on Tuesday who had played more minutes this season than any of our players.

It's not the losing - it's the lack of game plan and desire shown in the past 5 or so games.  I think we've have 10 shots on target in 5 games!

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2 hours ago, Bristolisredd said:

What a bizarre OP!!!! it’s football ... things happen .... anyone can beat anyone in the championship! like the last post just said ... we best man United a few years ago so why aren’t we now competing in the prem or in Europe ?????????

We also beat Liverpool back in the day, so basically we should beat everyone. 

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It isn’t rocket science, the 3 relegated sides have the better players.

Pukki, King/Solanke & Deeney/Joao Pedro are strikers others in our league can only match by either paying them £80k a week (Ayew) or spending £20m, (Toney).

Football is financially unequal, the pandemic simply exacerbates this.

I won’t be at all surprised to see the 3 relegated all go back up.

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5 hours ago, Major Isewater said:

We beat a Blackburn side who were compared to us in style and then lost abysmally to Rotherham.

If they can do it why couldn’t we ?

 

For this is the way football works. If we beat Stoke and Middlesborough beat us, then that means Middlesborough will definitely beat Stoke. Don't even need to look at the result of that game from a few weeks ago to know that that definitely happened. 

This is why I've always been a fan of the two game season. Once we've had two rounds of fixtures, we can work out who will beat who through course of season and everyone can go home and put their feet up for 11 months. Simple.

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4 hours ago, Denbury Red said:

It doesn’t help that we have probably more injuries than most teams we are playing.

The ones who are playing are knackered!

Yes we have injuries..............but we are far from unique?  Most Championship sides are suffering from injuries and fatigue, from the ongoing constant games.   Believe it or not, there are a few teams with more players out than us,.                  

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I don't understand your Blackburn comparison @Major Isewater

They play better football than us overall as of now. More possession, chances, goals- one of the top scorers in the division aren't they?

We beat them and it was enjoyable for sure but even then they out possessed, out shot us- on target and maybe off target too.

Rotherham are also notably more 'generous' ie concede more and gain less points on the road.

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9 hours ago, paulcityfan said:

I never agreed with the parachute payments.  Its a bit like house swap with the rich family staying in the council house receiving sneaky caviar parcels until they go back to their country estate 

I have a brief back of a matchbox idea.

Pay parachute payments as loans. Loans can be written off if stay down afterwards but it helps with costs but wouldn't be reflected in the Profit and Loss account. Thereby the pressure would be there on clubs from Day 1 to manage their costs responsibly.

It's one of a variety of ideas I have for reform of that system. I accept a need based on the chasm financially but it shouldn't be used to give any kind of unfair advantage.

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