championship talk blog

Pompey’s Freefall to Continue?

by Paul Scanling on July 24, 2010 · 3 comments

Recently rel­e­gated Portsmouth’s trou­bles are not over.  Far from it.  They may have just begun.  As some­one who has fol­lowed the whole sor­did affair since the first signs of trou­ble in the sum­mer of 2008, I can tell you it’s dif­fi­cult to type that sen­tence.  The fire sale that began with Sul­ley Muntari in July […]

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Sev­eral teams have man­aged to put together some pretty decent runs in the Cham­pi­onship this sea­son. All of them, though, are sus­cep­ti­ble to poor form and bad results. This is partly because this is a tight league with lit­tle dif­fer­ence between top and bot­tom — espe­cially com­pared with the Pre­mier League — but also because […]

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It’s dif­fi­cult to argue too much with Newcastle’s recent deci­sion to appoint Chris Hughton as their per­ma­nent man­ager. After all, New­cas­tle are two points clear at the top of the table, aver­ag­ing two points per game and are unde­feated at home. Yet if I was a New­cas­tle fan I would have deep con­cerns about the decision. […]

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Are The Cracks Showing For Blackwell Once More?

by Dan Trelfer on October 27, 2009 · 0 comments

It is prob­a­bly against all the rules of a blog to direct the reader away in the first para­graph, but I think it’s worth it. Before you read this lit­tle ram­ble, have a lis­ten to the BBC inter­view with Kevin Black­well, con­ducted after Sheffield United’s 3–0 defeat at Black­pool a week ago last Sat­ur­day. Fun, […]

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Will Southgate Last The Season?

by Dan Trelfer on August 30, 2009 · 5 comments

New­cas­tle and Mid­dles­brough entered the Cham­pi­onship from the wrong direc­tion yet still boasted two of the most tal­ented squads in the his­tory of the divi­sion. With Newcastle’s off-field dra­mas threat­en­ing to do seri­ous dam­age, many expected Mid­dles­brough, with their more set­tled struc­ture, to pros­per. New­cas­tle were always likely to lose the likes of Owen and […]

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Less than two weeks to go until the new Cham­pi­onship sea­son. Squads are com­ing together. Some man­agers are con­tent, oth­ers are pan­ick­ing. Fans are enjoy­ing a final fort­night of opti­mism before real­ity sets in. With this in mind, here are five ran­dom pre­dic­tions for the com­ing sea­son, hung on a flimsy ani­mal theme: Dark Horses: Not­ting­ham Forest […]

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Magilton Leads The Championship Sack Race

by Dan Trelfer on July 5, 2009 · 4 comments

Of the 24 teams that kicked off the Cham­pi­onship just under a year ago, eleven now have new man­agers. In the major­ity of cases, the man­ager was removed due to per­ceived fail­ings. Being a Cham­pi­onship man­ager is like being a duck at a shoot­ing gallery. It’s a ques­tion of ‘when’, not ‘if’, no mat­ter how […]

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