Category: Championship League

• Burnley romp past 10-man Luton 4-0; Blades 1-0 Luton
• Coventry beat Stoke 3-2 in thriller; West Brom 1-0 QPR

Burnley and Sheffield United had a contrasting day but both came up with victories to put pressure on the Championship leaders, Leeds, who visit Portsmouth at lunchtime on Sunday.

Sheffield United were made to work for their victory over Preston at Bramall Lane, with Tyrese Campbell scoring the only goal 11 minutes after half-time. Campbell had a huge chance within the first 90 seconds when Harrison Burrows’ low cross fell to Campbell at the far post but he somehow missed the target, albeit from a tight angle. Moments later, Ryan Porteous nearly turned Ben Brereton Díaz’s cross into his own net before Gustavo Hamer had a go from distance but his curling shot sailed harmlessly over the bar.

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• Clarets beat Cardiff despite clean sheet run ending at 12
• Bolton stun League One leaders; Wycombe close gap

Burnley’s run of Championship clean sheets finally came to an end on Tuesday night, but they kept the heat on in the promotion race with a 2-1 win at Cardiff.

Yousef Salech’s firm header in the 42nd minute was the first goal the Clarets had conceded in 1,132 minutes of league action, a run of 12 consecutive clean sheets broken. But by the time Salech scored it, early goals from Josh Brownhill and Maxime Estève had already put Scott Parker’s side in charge, and the win puts them two points behind second-placed Sheffield United.

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• Norfolk Holdings completes majority takeover
• Smith and husband Wynn Jones step down from board

Norfolk Holdings has completed its majority takeover of Norwich City, with Delia Smith and her husband, Michael Wynn Jones, no longer part of the club’s board.

It was announced in August that Norfolk Holdings, led by the Milwaukee Brewers owner, Mark Attanasio, was set to increase its shareholding to around 85%, which would result in Smith and Wynn Jones stepping down as directors and becoming honorary life presidents.

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• Furlong equaliser frustrates leaders at home
• Blades sit three points behind after victory

Leeds’ title charge was checked as they were held to a frustrating 1-1 draw by West Brom. Junior Firpo headed the home side into an early lead but Darnell Furlong equalised with a looping header before the break.

The point still extended Leeds’ unbeaten league run to 17 matches as they head towards a Premier League return. Though the West Brom’s manager, Tony Mowbray, later questioned their ability to stay there.

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Eliezer Mayenda tormented Sheffield Wednesday once again as his controversial double helped Sunderland boost their Championship automatic promotion hopes with a 2-1 victory at Hillsborough.

The Spaniard scored two goals during the Black Cats’ 4-0 win over Wednesday in August and he grabbed both, including a highly contentious opener after what appeared to be a handball, on Friday night to help his side move within five points of second-placed Sheffield United with a return to winning ways after successive league defeats.

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The night Leeds United’s season swung decisively, or just another evening in the most unpredictable league in football? Only in May will we know that answer for sure, but the scale of the celebrations from those associated with Leeds here perhaps told you everything you need to know.

The popular song aimed in Leeds’ direction when things are going wrong is to decry that Daniel Farke’s side are falling apart. But here, when it mattered most, this team showed that they are anything but one that capitulates in the crucial moments.

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Leeds scored three goals in the last 20 minutes to stun Sheffield United and move five points clear at the top

9 min: Off the line by Gruev! Meslier is looking vulnerable on set-pieces. He paws Peck’s corner back towards his own goal – he thought he was fouled, the referee disagreed – and Gruev did brilliantly to stoop forward and head the ball off the line.

8 min A long throw from the left is spilled by Meslier, who is very relieved to dive on the loose ball before any Sheffield United player can get to it.

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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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