Thoughts On The First Month Of The CCC Season

The first month in the cam­paign to win pro­mo­tion to the BPL is over and here are my thoughts on the CCC sea­son so far and lord knows it will prob­a­bly change by the end of the sea­son. The rel­e­gated teams from the BPL last year are hav­ing solid sea­sons minus Derby County. Birm­ing­ham are in 3rd posi­tion with 10 points and is only out of an auto­matic pro­mo­tion spot via goal dif­fer­ence behind Pre­ston and Wolves. Read­ing are in 6th posi­tion with 7 points and play­ing well while Derby County are at the foot of the table with a mea­ger 1 point. There dread­ful form from last sea­son has car­ried over and despite Paul Jew­ell bring­ing in 14 new play­ers, wins are still some­thing that Derby County can not con­jure up.

The pro­moted teams from League One least sea­son are hav­ing solid starts. Swansea City are sit­ting in 7th with 7 points and adapt­ing well to the CCC, so are Don­caster who are in 10th with 7 points as well. Not­ting­ham For­est are 16th with 4 points. If all three clubs keep up this form they will sur­vive this sea­son and miss an auto­matic return to League One which is what they want to avoid. Other teams that have stormed to a good start are table top­ping Wolves fol­lowed by Pre­ston North End. Bris­tol City are con­tin­u­ing thier good form from last sea­son as well no fal­ter­ing one bit. Sheffield United are sit­ting in the final play-off place and are look­ing like they may chal­lenge for pro­mo­tion. Black­pool who won pro­mo­tion last sea­son from League One and barely avoided rel­e­ga­tion last sea­son are sit­ting mid-table and look to have adapted to the CCC. Charl­ton is hav­ing a rough start sit­ting in 11th place with 6 points. They along with Wat­ford and Sheffield United are in the last year of the para­chute pay­ment a club gets when rel­e­gated from the BPL for two years if they are not auto­mat­i­cally pro­moted. These three clubs need to get pro­moted back to the BPL this sea­son or that extra money runs out and it becomes increas­ingly hard to gain promotion.

One thing that has been fun is there have been more then a cou­ple of high scor­ing matches this sea­son in a divi­sion that is known for its phys­i­cal play and route one foot­ball. In 4 match weeks we have had two matches end 4–1, two matches end 4–2, three matches end 3–0, and one total demo­li­tion of 5–1. While the CCC has high scor­ing matches, it is known for grind­ing out the 1–0 result more then pro­lific scor­ing. This is an evenly matched divi­sion from top to bot­tom. As last year showed with both Stoke City and Hull City gain­ing pro­mo­tion, you never know from week to week what is going to hap­pen or who will get the cov­eted pro­mo­tion spots. As my fel­low blog­ger Dominic Mather said, this is the most com­pet­i­tive league in Eng­land with any team hav­ing the chance to beat another team. The table is going to change many times over the sea­son and teams will rise and fall all sea­son, this is the beauty of the Coca-Cola Championship.

Tagged as: CCC thoughts, high scoring matches