Category: Championship League

Leeds, Sheffield United and Burnley are all vying for Premier League returns but fans will ask if it’s really worth it

Tibetan Buddhist monks will spend months working in cold conditions, icing their fingers, enduring significant discomfort, to create gorgeously detailed sculptures out of yak’s butter. And then they will destroy the sculptures, leaving them out in the sun to melt.

For anybody connected with a Championship club, the sentiment will be familiar. At some level, most clubs exist to feed those higher up the pyramid. So why would a fan emotionally invest in a young star, even a local one, knowing he is unlikely to hang around for more than two or three years? And if a team are promoted, at least half the side will probably have to be upgraded to offer even a chance of survival. When the gulf between divisions is so vast, everything is fleeting, team-building an act of permanent evolution. What monks do to convey the understanding that life is transient and that the artefact is far less important than the act of creation, Daniel Farke and Chris Wilder are doing because football’s economics demand it.

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• Patterson gaffe gifts 1-0 win to raise Tigers’ survival hopes
• Sheehan’s Swansea cruise; Baggies brush off Oxford

Rubén Sellés wants Hull’s ambition to keep rising after an impressive 1-0 win at promotion-chasing Sunderland boosted his side’s fight for Championship survival.

The Black Cats goalkeeper Anthony Patterson fumbled Joe Gelhardt’s corner into his own net in the 18th minute and Sunderland were frustrated by an impressive display from the Tigers, earning Sellés’s side a fourth win from their past five away matches. “This was a fantastic job and we had to show character, be good defensively,” said Sellés. “If we keep defending as we do, especially away from home, then we will do well.”

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• Marcus Edwards scores his first goal for Clarets in 4-0 win
• Bristol City relish 2-1 comeback win over Middlesbrough

Marcus Edwards marked his first Burnley start with the opening goal as the Clarets kept up the pressure on the sides above them with a 4-0 win over Sheffield Wednesday. With the Championship’s top two, Leeds and Sheffield United, playing each other on Monday, third-placed Burnley took their chance to narrow the gap with second-half goals from Josh Brownhill, Connor Roberts and Manuel Benson.

Edwards, signed on loan from Sporting last month, opened the scoring after 43 minutes. Having played a short pass to Josh Cullen, Edwards received the return, benefited from a ricochet off Shea Charles and showed neat footwork before producing a close-range finish.

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The news that a national poetry centre is to be established in Leeds proved the source of considerable pride in West Yorkshire on Monday. By 10pm on a bitterly cold night at Elland Road, any notions that Leeds would capture the mood courtesy of a suitably cadenced performance had been thoroughly disabused as Daniel Farke’s side fought their way to a dramatic last-gasp win after Wilson Isidor had given Sunderland the lead.

Yet if it was hardly poetic, substitute Pascal Struijk’s gamechanging double returned Leeds to the top of the Championship, leaving them two points ahead of Sheffield United, seven clear of third-placed Burnley and 10 in front of Régis Le Bris’s team.

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• Swans 17th in Championship after seven losses in nine
• Chairman says change needed to lift team on the pitch

Swansea City have sacked their head coach Luke Williams after seven defeats in his last nine league matches, prompting the Championship club to cancel an eagerly awaited fans’ forum scheduled for Tuesday.

Williams departs after a bruising run of results and a difficult January transfer window, with the club missing out on several targets having sanctioned the sale of their long-serving captain Matt Grimes to playoff-chasing Coventry. Among supporters there is growing dismay at the running of the club.

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Versatile French playmaker adds class and experience to a young side hopeful of returning to the Premier League

Enzo Le Fée is the subject of considerable introspection at Roma. The concern at the Stadio Olimpico is that last month’s decision to offload the multitalented French midfielder with more than a hint of Luka Modric about his game, might prove a big mistake. Sunderland certainly exhibit zero sign of buyer’s remorse over an expensive loan deal obligated to turn into a formal £20m transfer should Régis Le Bris’s team return to the Premier League this spring.

“Le Fée is 100% quality,” says Gary Bennett, the former Sunderland defender turned BBC Radio Newcastle match analyst. “From what we’ve seen so far, wow. Twenty million will be money very well spent.”

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• Burnley’s Deepdale draw makes it 11 clean sheets in a row
• Pompey strike twice in second half to win 2-0 at Oxford

Scott Parker was left frustrated that Marcus Edwards did not get a late penalty in Burnley’s 0-0 draw with Preston in the Championship. Controversy struck in the 90th minute when the on-loan Sporting star went down under a sliding challenge from Lewis Gibson but referee Anthony Kitchen waved away the spot-kick appeals.

For the visitors it was an 11th clean sheet in a row in the Championship but a frustrated Parker said: “It’s a penalty for me and I don’t think I’m being biased in my understanding of it. Marcus Edwards has touched the ball first and then he’s touched it on to the player who’s slid on the ground on to that player. The referee said to me that the defender got the ball. He didn’t get the ball. If the defender’s running with the ball and I want to tackle him, I have to get contact with the ball first.”

This story will be updated after the 3pm kick-offs

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John Eustace was given a painful demonstration of the size of the task he has to save Derby from relegation as his new side slumped to a 4-0 defeat at QPR. Ilias Chair scored twice, with Koki Saito and Ronnie Edwards also on target on a disastrous first day at the office for the new Rams manager.

Eustace raised eyebrows this week by leaving Blackburn, a side challenging for promotion to the Premier League, for one battling against the drop into League One. While Rovers are fifth, Derby’s humbling in west London meant they slipped into the bottom three on goal difference. Eustace certainly knew what was in store for his new side on Friday night, as his final league match with Rovers was a 2-1 defeat at Loftus Road just 10 days earlier.

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• Hardie the hero again as Plymouth move off bottom
• Sunderland, Burnley and Sheffield United march on

The FA Cup giantkillers Plymouth roared to their second memorable win in three days to climb off the foot of the Championship table. Ryan Hardie, the penalty hero against Liverpool on Sunday, scored twice in a thumping 5-1 victory against Millwall.

Joe Bryan’s own goal gave Argyle the lead and another Hardie spot-kick put them two up. Home Park was buzzing again when Mustapha Bundu added the third eight minutes after half-time and Hardie grabbed his second before Bryan pulled one back.

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• Leads win 4-0 away to surge five points clear at top
• Preston and Coventry boost playoff hopes

Daniel Farke hailed Leeds’s “top level” forwards after the emphatic 4-0 win at Watford increased their lead at the Championship summit to five points.

Dan James opened the scoring in the 20th minute after latching on to a misplaced pass from Edo Kayembe. The Wales winger made it 2-0 eight minutes later when Watford were caught out by a swift counterattack. Manor Solomon saw a shot deflected in for the third before half-time, with Joël Piroe slotting in the fourth midway through the second period after Watford were undone with some quick passing in tight spaces.

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• Rovers ‘extremely disappointed’ by Eustace’s request
• Eustace, 45, ended his playing career with Derby

Blackburn Rovers have “reluctantly granted” their manager, John Eustace, permission to speak to fellow Championship side Derby County.

Eustace confirmed after Sunday’s 2-0 FA Cup defeat to Wolves that Derby had made an official approach for his services. The relegation-threatened Rams are seeking a replacement for Paul Warne, who was sacked on Friday.

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• Palace loanee seals 2-1 victory over Portsmouth
• Sunderland salvage late point against Watford

Jesurun Rak-Sakyi struck the winner for Sheffield United as they moved up to second in the Championship with a 2-1 victory over Portsmouth.

Gustavo Hamer struck first for the Blades before Connor Ogilvie’s quickfire equaliser midway through the first half. The decisive moment came on 73 minutes when substitutes Rhian Brewster and Rak-Sakyi combined, with the latter, on loan from Crystal Palace, timing his run to steer Brewster’s low cross into the net. It moved the Blades to within two points of leaders Leeds, and meant a seventh consecutive away league defeat for Portsmouth.

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First-half strikes from Joël Piroe and Jayden Bogle helped Leeds stretch their advantage at the top of Championship to five points with a comfortable 2-0 victory over Coventry.

The visitors were a class above Frank Lampard’s side, who came into the game on the back of four successive league wins. Coventry could only blame themselves for being two goals down at the break. Piroe’s expertly taken finish made Ellis Simms pay for a mistake before Bogle was handed a gift by the goalkeeper Oliver Dovin.

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• Leaders are unbeaten in the league since 30 November
• Sheffield United sink Derby, Pompey hold Burnley

Championship leaders Leeds thumped Cardiff 7-0 to claim their biggest win of the season and extend their unbeaten home run in all competitions to 14 games.

The Wales winger Dan James supplied Brenden Aaronson for a sixth-minute opener before crossing low for loanee Manor Solomon to tap home a second in the 13th minute. The outstanding James scored Leeds’s third five minutes into the second half to cap a fine performance as the visitors’ eight-match unbeaten run in all competitions was emphatically ended.

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• Wrexham lose first home game in 22; Wycombe win late
• Millwall edge out Portsmouth; Walsall lose again

Azeem Abdulai scored a hat-trick as Leyton Orient moved into the League One playoff positions with a 6-2 win at Exeter.

Orient were 4-0 up after 34 minutes with two goals in two minutes from their new signing Abdulai and further goals from Sean Clare and Dilan Markanday. Millenic Alli scored twice for the hosts before Abdulai completed his hat-trick and Jamie Donley’s goal piled more misery on to the Grecians.

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