Category: Championship League

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.

Continue reading...

• 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.

Continue reading...

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.”

Continue reading...

• 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.

Continue reading...

• 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.

Continue reading...

• 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.

Continue reading...

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.

Continue reading...

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.

Continue reading...

• 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.

Continue reading...

• Fans turn on Sellés as Blades slump to fourth defeat

• Ipswich rescue point in 16th minute of stoppage time

Rubén Sellés admitted his future as Sheffield United manager is out of his hands as Blades fans called for the Spaniard to be sacked after just four league games in charge.

Sellés’ nightmare start to life in charge of United continued as they went down 1-0 at table-topping Middlesbrough, leaving the Blades bottom and without a point going into the first international break. The away fans at the Riverside turned on Sellés and chanted the name of former manager Chris Wilder after Tommy Conway sealed a fourth straight win for Boro with a fine second-half strike.

Continue reading...

Abdul Fatawu’s opener and a Ricardo goal created by 16-year-old Jeremy Monga took the midlands spoils

1 min: Off we go. Some empty seats? And a stray cone left on the field delayed the kick-off. A guilty coach had to run on and remove it. It’s high press and high energy already.

Some loud Kasbabian – thankfully not their awful Sky Premier League anthem – is ringing out. Here we go in the greatest league in the whole bloody world. The teams come out to applause for the last game of August.

Continue reading...

Abdul Fatawu’s stunning early goal and Ricardo Pereira’s late effort gave Leicester record a hard-fought but deserved victory over Birmingham in the Championship. Fatawu’s brilliant finish lit up a game of precious few chances, as these two Midlands rivals slugged it out under the lights at the KP Stadium.

Chris Davies’s side, who came into the contest unbeaten in the second tier, improved as the contest between two of the league’s most fancied clubs wore on. But with Jay Stansfield ruled out they struggled to create enough to trouble Martí Cifuentes’s side, before the Leicester substitute pounced following 16-year-old Jeremy Monga’s memorable assist.

Continue reading...

• Teenager curls home goal in another strong performance for new side

• He says his ambition is to ‘make the crowd go wild’ at Vicarage Road

The young Socceroos star Nestory Irankunda has scored his first goal for the Championship side Watford with a stunning free kick.

The 19-year-old winger, who starred at Adelaide United but struggled to get game time at Bayern Munich, curled home a glorious 25-yard free kick to give the Hornets the lead at Swansea in the 35th minute of their 1-1 draw on Saturday.

Ahead of finals sign up for our free weekly AFL newsletter

Continue reading...

• Sky Blues rampant on momentous day

• Stoke defeat Southampton with 10 men

Haji Wright, Jack Rudoni and Victor Torp all scored twice as Coventry marked a momentous day in their history with a 7-1 demolition of an abject QPR. Earlier on Saturday, the club, owned by Doug King, announced they had bought the Coventry Building Society Arena for the first time since it opened 20 years ago.

The Sky Blues then completed a day few of their fans will forget as they ruthlessly exploited QPR’s generosity in defence to make it back-to-back wins in the Championship in stunning fashion.

Continue reading...

Ipswich and Southampton earned a point apiece as two of the relegated clubs from the Premier League last season drew 1-1 at Portman Road.

Taylor Harwood-Bellis’s own goal after four minutes gave Ipswich an early advantage but Jay Robinson equalised for the visitors just before the half-hour mark. In a frantic second half, Sam Szmodics hit a post while Robinson had a shot deflected by the Ipswich goalkeeper Alex Palmer as neither side were able to grab victory.

Continue reading...