Category: Championship League

• One game remaining in current Championship season
• Club ‘appreciate supporters’ frustrations at this time’

QPR have announced that their manager, Martí Cifuentes, has been placed on gardening leave, with one game of the season to go.

The news comes amid speculation about Cifuentes’s future, with the Spaniard being linked with West Brom, who sacked Tony Mowbray last week. Kevin Betsy and Xavi Calm, Cifuentes’s assistants, are to take interim charge before the final game of the Rs’ Championship campaign, Saturday’s trip to Sunderland.

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As, partway though the first half, the home supporters launched into a chorus of “Daniel, Daniel Farke,” a little smile played across the face of the Leeds manager as he offered a polite wave in return.

Up in the directors’ box, Paraag Marathe looked on inscrutably. If, and it remains quite a big if, he really is considering sacking Farke, the club’s chairman – who, perhaps significantly pulled out of a planned pre-match television interview at the last minute – must surely be having second thoughts after this.

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• Cardiff’s 0-0 draw with West Brom seals Welsh club’s fate
• Baptiste’s late Luton winner hurts Sky Blues’ playoff hopes

Cardiff have been relegated on a dramatic day at the bottom of the Championship, with Plymouth left on the brink and Hull pulled into the bottom three. Cardiff were held 0-0 at home by West Brom and are now bottom after Plymouth won 2-1 at Preston. However, Argyle’s poor goal difference means they stand no real chance of survival.

Cardiff returned to the third tier after 22 years, six years after they had been playing in the Premier League. They had Aaron Ramsey in interim charge, while Albion had James Morrison in temporary control after Tony Mowbray was sacked on Monday. Both sides had chances with Albion’s Isaac Price making a goalline clearance from Calum Chambers and having a first-half effort that bounced back off a post. The result ended West Brom’s playoff hopes.

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The Championship’s best team will need to be smart in the transfer market to give themselves a chance next season

When Leeds United sold £140m of playing talent last summer, Daniel Farke deviated from accepted managerial convention and declined to throw his toys out of the pram. Farke is a little too unconventional, a little too resistant to groupthink, to always do the expected and his club’s owner, the San Francisco‑based 49ers Enterprises, is poised to reap the benefits.

The German’s unusual amalgam of high emotional intelligence and advanced numeracy have helped to provide the framework for the freshly secured promotion to the Premier League that Leeds so narrowly missed out on last May.

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The Premier League-bound Clarets and their manager have no shortage of motivation heading into next season

If the opening night was anything to go by, it looked as if Burnley’s return to the Premier League at the first time of asking was inevitable. It was Scott Parker’s first game in charge, a tricky trip to Luton, who had dropped down with the Clarets. One team had enjoyed a summer of continuity whereas everything had changed at Turf Moor but it was Burnley who left with a dominant 4-1 victory.

That warm night at Kenilworth Road was not indicative of what was to come. By the end of the month, three of the goalscorers had left – 12 first-team players departed in total in August – forcing Parker to almost reset after the campaign had started, but it helped mould his squad into his vision for a promotion push. It would not be done with the flair and style with which Vincent Kompany et al accrued 101 points and 87 goals to win the title two years ago but, with the potential to reach a century, the result could be the same.

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• Canaries missed out on playoff spot in Championship
• A 3-1 defeat at Millwall marks Thorup’s final match

Jack Wilshere will take charge of Norwich’s final two games of the season after the Canaries parted company with Johannes Hoff Thorup.

Norwich have slipped to 14th in the Championship after winning only twice in 14 matches, with their 3-1 Easter Monday defeat at Millwall being their fourth loss in five games. Thorup was appointed head coach on a three-year deal last May and the Dane leaves alongside his assistant Glen Riddersholm.

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• Hull beat Preston 2-1 as four of bottom five win
• Millwall bolster playoff hopes as Coventry and Boro falter

West Brom have announced the departure of Tony Mowbray after the club’s play-off hopes were all-but ended by a 3-1 Championship defeat at home to relegation-threatened Derby.

The visitors twice punished the Baggies from set-pieces when Ebou Adams and Jerry Yates struck from corners in the first half. Adam Armstrong’s goal halved the deficit and made for a nervy final 20 minutes until Nathaniel Mendez-Laing sealed maximum points for Derby, two minutes from time.

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Leeds United’s long march out of the wilderness is over. The last lap of an often gruelling and sometimes downright painful journey into the Premier League proved joyous and unexpectedly straightforward, the only frustration being a slight delay to the start of the formal celebrations.

It was occasioned by the need to wait for the final score from Turf Moor, where Burnley beat Sheffield United to join Leeds in the top tier while consigning Chris Wilder’s side to the playoffs.

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Leeds United all but confirmed their return the top flight, while four of the Championship’s bottom five sides won on a day Morecambe’s exit from the Football League was confirmed

• Read Louise Taylor’s match report from Elland Road

Cardiff City: The Welsh side are second from bottom of the Championship table and host Oxford United thisd afternoon. Following Saturday’s dismissal of Omer Riza, Aaron Ramsey has been given the job of keeping Cardiff up with just three games of the season remaining.

The 34-year-old midfielder has not played for Cardiff since suffering the latest in a long litany of hamstring injuries in March.

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• Aaron Ramsey takes over for last three games of season
• Bluebirds currently languishing 23rd in Championship

Aaron Ramsey has been given the task of trying to save Cardiff City from relegation after Omer Riza was sacked on Saturday. The Bluebirds parted company with their manager after a 2-0 defeat at Sheffield United on Good Friday left them 23rd in the Championship, one point from the last safe spot with three games left.

A statement from the Welsh club read: “Cardiff City can confirm that a decision has been taken to relieve Omer Riza of his duties as first team manager. Aaron Ramsey will lead the club for the remaining three games of the Championship season, beginning with Monday’s match at home to Oxford United.

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• Bristol City and Coventry tighten grip on playoff spots
• Plymouth stay bottom after injury-time Boro winner

Leeds are on the verge of promotion after Manor Solomon’s goal secured a 1-0 victory at Oxford. The win keeps Leeds top of the Championship and five points clear of third-placed Sheffield United with three games remaining.

Daniel Farke’s side scored the decisive goal in the first half with Jayden Bogle’s cross finished at the far post by the Tottenham loanee Solomon.

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Leeds and Burnley are trying to hold off Blades at the top and thrilling race for playoff spots must be whittled down

Ao Tanaka sat in the away dressing room and started crying. The Japan midfielder had just helped Leeds win a vital match at Middlesbrough this month but they were not tears of joy. “I asked Ao: ‘Why?’” said his manager, Daniel Farke. “He said: ‘I don’t know boss, I’m just so empty.’”

Given it is April and, with four games remaining, a gruelling, painfully tight, Championship promotion race is drawing towards a denouement, no one seemed too surprised. “It’s hard for all my players at the moment,” said Farke, whose team could, like Burnley, be promoted as early as Easter Monday. “We’re working for the most emotional club in the UK and the outside world is always nervous and panicking.”

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Frank Lampard watched on from the stands as his playoff-chasing Coventry side were held to a 1-1 draw at struggling Hull. Lampard served a one-match touchline ban at the MKM Stadium and was fined £2,000 after his sending off at the end of the defeat by Burnley earlier this month for an outburst at referee James Bell.

While Coventry largely dominated Hull and went ahead through a deflected strike from Matt Grimes, who earlier produced two goalline blocks to deny Kasey Palmer, substitute Abu Kamara equalised. Lampard’s side therefore stay sixth, moving three points clear of seventh-placed West Brom, and the manager may rue his team’s lack of a clinical edge as Hull goalkeeper Ivor Pandur made several important saves.

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• Defeat is blow for Blades as Leeds beat Preston
• Sunderland lose 1-0 at home to Swansea

Miron Muslic praised his Plymouth side for a remarkable late 2-1 Championship comeback victory over promotion-chasing Sheffield United.

Muhamed Tijani scored an 88th-minute winner after in-form Ryan Hardie – with nine goals in his last 11 games – cancelled out Jesurun Rak-Sakyi’s 44th minute opener. That boosted Plymouth’s survival hopes but dented the Blades’ automatic promotion ambitions as they slipped five points behind joint leaders Leeds – who deservedly beat Preston 2-1 – and Burnley with four games remaining.

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• Sky Blues snatch late victory over Portsmouth
• Bottom club Plymouth well beaten by Swansea

Coventry moved into the Championship play-off places after a dramatic 1-0 victory over visitors Portsmouth.

The game seemed destined for a frustrating stalemate from the Sky Blues’ perspective, but Jamie Paterson had other ideas.

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