Category: Championship League

• Uruguayan was appointed in May and has Watford 11th

• Gracia had spell as club’s manager that ended in 2019

Watford have sacked their manager Paulo Pezzolano after only five months and 10 games in charge, with their former manager Javi Gracia confirmed as his replacement.

It is understood that Pezzolano, who was appointed to replace Tom Cleverley in May, and his technical staff were told not to take training on Wednesday after speculation that he was to depart began to mount on Tuesday. The Uruguayan was summoned to a meeting at which he became the 11th manager Watford have sacked since the start of 2020.

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• Sheffield Wednesday 0-5 Coventry, Hull 1-0 Sheffield Utd

• Boro slip to Pompey defeat, Leicester see off Swansea

Frank Lampard praised his side’s stirring second-half display after Coventry went top of the Championship with a 5-0 rout of Sheffield Wednesday at Hillsborough.

Brandon Thomas-Asante scored twice in the first half with Haji Wright adding a third on the stroke of half-time. Substitute Ellis Simms and Tatsuhiro Sakamoto added further goals in the second period to complete a comprehensive victory.

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• Wright inspires 4-0 win for Frank Lampard’s side

• Josh Maja goal gives West Brom 1-0 win at Norwich

Haji Wright added two more goals to his early-season collection as Coventry dismantled Millwall 4-0 at the Den to move second in the Championship table. The USA international Wright is the top scorer in the Championship with seven goals after his double against a Lions side who became the latest to feel the power of the Sky Blues’ rampant attack this season.

Frank Lampard’s side remain unbeaten in the league and closed to within two points of pacesetters Middlesbrough after taking their goal tally to 22 goals in eight matches.

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• Chris Wilder sent off for kicking a ball into the crowd

• Middlesbrough stay top after goalless draw with Stoke

Ross Stewart’s second-half double sealed for Southampton a 2-1 comeback win at Bramall Lane and consigned Sheffield United to a seventh league defeat of the season.

Stewart cancelled out Tyrese Campbell’s first-half opener for the Blades early in the second period and arrowed a stunning winner into the top corner seven minutes later as the Saints clinched their first league win on the road this campaign.

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• Lampard hails ‘outstanding’ Coventry after 3-0 win

• Sheffield United beat Oxford to secure first points

Frank Lampard hailed Coventry’s “outstanding” display after the Sky Blues saw off 10-man Birmingham 3-0 to extend their unbeaten start. Brandon Thomas-Asante opened the scoring in the first half before Jack Robinson was sent off for a second bookable offence just before the break. Coventry took full advantage as a Bright Osayi-Samuel own goal was followed by Victor Torp’s fifth goal of the campaign to round off the win.

“It was outstanding, every part of the game, 11 v 11, 11 v 10, the focus of the group, the work ethic, the desire to compete in challenges and duels against a strong team,” said Lampard. “If you want to succeed in this league you have to have big physicality and capacity. That’s one of the things we’ve worked on a lot and it’s really grown.”

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Nat Phillips’ own goal deep into stoppage time helped Leicester rescue a 1-1 draw from under the nose of West Brom at the Hawthorns. Leicester were staring down the barrel of a second league defeat of the season but a late equaliser extended their own unbeaten run to five matches while denying West Brom the chance to climb into the top two before the rest of the weekend’s action.

The hosts were looking to respond to back-to-back defeats and they went ahead in the 10th minute thanks to a brilliant goal from Samuel Iling-Junior, who grabbed his first in West Brom colours. The visitors were limited to half-chances in the second period in what looked to be a frustrating second half until Phillips put into his own goal which sent the travelling contingent wild as Leicester rescued a fifth point from losing positions this season.

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Manager returning for a third stint finds the weather matching the mood as Charlton leave with three points

It is rare that you catch Chris Wilder lost for words or emotion but as Tanto Olaofe rolled the ball into the Sheffield United net late on Saturday afternoon and pandemonium erupted among the Charlton staff to his left, even Wilder didn’t really know what to do with himself.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Even the most pessimistic of Blades supporters would have anticipated that the return of United’s favourite son for a third stint in the dugout would have provided even the most fractional of lifts, enough to at least pick up a first point of the season against a Charlton side without a win since the opening day.

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• Blackburn v Ipswich abandoned with 10 minutes left

• Sheffield Wednesday claim first win of campaign

Chris Wilder’s return to Sheffield United turned sour as the Charlton substitute Tanto Olaofe snatched a last-minute winner to leave the Blades rooted to the bottom of the Championship. Wilder swept back in to Bramall Lane to replace Rubén Sellés this week but Olaofe’s effort made plain the size of the task ahead, with his club still searching for their first points of an increasingly desperate campaign.

Tyrese Campbell missed two good chances in the first half but the Blades keeper Michael Cooper denied Lloyd Jones and Greg Docherty headed over for the visitors before Olaofe turned home a low cross in the dying seconds.

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Popular midfielder is a lifelong Boro fan and is adamant they can return to the Premier League after nine seasons

Hayden Hackney has seen the public display of affection. In other words, he has seen Bob Mortimer’s slew of social media posts. “YOU BEAUTY!!” the Middlesbrough-born comedian posted to his millions of followers in the minutes after the transfer deadline passed this month, accompanied by a picture of Hackney, who rejected a move to Championship rivals Ipswich earlier in the window. “One of my family told me so I looked at his profile and it was just a photo of me,” the 23-year-old says, laughing. “‘Oh my God. No way.’ It was funny.”

That came a few days after Mortimer, part of Boro’s under-16s in the 70s, stressed he could not contemplate a Boro team without Hackney. The midfielder, who joined Middlesbrough at eight years old after being spotted playing for his home town team Redcar Town, is central to the club’s hopes of returning to the Premier League after nine seasons away. He has racked up more minutes than any other Boro player last campaign and played all but seven minutes of this one. He is living his dream. “Everyone in my family supports Middlesbrough,” Hackney says. “My dad used to go to all the games when he was younger and I think back then his excuse to go to the games was to take me as well. I loved it.”

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• Wilder returns after three months with club bottom

• He departed following playoff defeat to Sunderland

Chris Wilder has been confirmed as Sheffield United’s new manager on a contract to 2027 after Rubén Sellés was sacked on Sunday. It is the 57-year-old’s third spell in charge of his boyhood club – and comes just three months after he was sacked by the club. He takes over a team bottom of the Championship after defeats in all five of their league matches.

United said in a statement that promotion remained the ambition for the season. The club are nine points off the playoffs and 13 behind the leaders, Middlesbrough, after the 5-0 loss at Ipswich on Friday that triggered Sellés’s dismissal.

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• Rubén Sellés lasts five games of Championship season

• Wilder back in dugout having left the club on 18 June

Chris Wilder is poised to make a surprise return at Sheffield United and manage his boyhood club for a third time after the Blades sacked Rubén Sellés following six defeats from six games. United acted after Sellés’s side were dismantled 5-0 at Ipswich on Friday.

Wilder was dismissed after losing the Championship playoff final at Wembley and the Blades turned to Sellés, who narrowly avoided relegation with Hull City last season.

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• West Brom lose at home to derby so do not leapfrog leaders

• Stoke second after beating Birmingham; Bristol City third

The substitute Sontje Hansen scored a stoppage-time equaliser three minutes after coming on to earn Middlesbrough, the leaders, a 2-2 draw at Preston. The 23-year-old came off the bench after Jordan Storey looked to have won it for Preston and provided the telling touch from close range after the hosts failed to clear their lines from a corner.

Lewis Dobbin put the visitors ahead with a sublime solo effort early on before the visitors got a deserved 72nd-minute leveller through Matt Targett. Storey put Preston back in front with an 88th-minute glancing header before the final twist in the tale.

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Pompey midfielder considers playing in first South Coast derby league meeting in 13 years bucket-list worthy

Inside a blue and white dugout at Portsmouth’s training ground John Swift is reliving the childhood he spent a few miles away, across the harbour in Gosport. He maps out the view he had from his front door on Dukes Road and the Forton park sports court that was his playground. It was while enjoying a kickabout there with friends, approaching his 11th birthday, that his mother, Pauline, called him in to advise he was being released by Pompey. “I remember, quite vividly, sitting on the sofa as my mum read me the letter,” he says. “And then I was almost just like: ‘Can I go back out and play?’”

At that age it was hard to comprehend what it really meant and a couple of weeks later he was representing Pace Youth, a team in Totton, the other side of Southampton. As Portsmouth prepare to face Southampton in the Championship on Sunday, the first league match between fierce rivals in 13 and a half years, the rivalry is not lost on Swift. The last meeting came in the Carabao Cup third round in 2019, when Saints ran out 4-0 winners. Then, Southampton were in the Premier League, 51 places above third-tier Pompey. Now they are equals in the Championship.

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Jaden Philogene scored a hat-trick as Ipswich thrashed the Championship’s bottom side Sheffield United 5-0. The heavy defeat heaps pressure on to Blades head coach, Rubén Sellés, who has now lost all five matches since taking over at Bramall Lane in the summer.

George Hirst and Jack Clarke were also on the scoresheet as Ipswich chalked up their first win of the season and their first at Portman Road since beating Chelsea in the Premier League in December.

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• EFL wants to add National League-style eliminator

• Plan could be expanded to Leagues One and Two

The English Football League is in talks over adding an eliminator round to the Championship playoffs and increasing the number of participants from four to six.

The proposal is a similar format to the one used by the National League. In the Championship the team that finish fifth would play the eighth-placed team and sixth would meet seventh in one-off ties at the higher-ranked team’s home stadium.

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