Category: Championship League

• Club escaped Championship relegation on final day
• Spaniard won nine of 27 league games in charge

Hull have sacked their head coach, Rubén Sellés, after less than six months in charge.

The club escaped Championship relegation on the final day of the season on goal difference, having been bottom when Sellés was appointed in December. The 41-year-old Spaniard is the third manager sacked by the Hull owner, Acun Ilicali, in the past 12 months and the club now begin their search for a fifth permanent coach since the Turkish media executive took control in early 2022.

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• Former Valladolid manager is ‘the leader we need’
• Hornets finished 14th in Championship this season

Watford have announced the appointment of Paulo Pezzolano as their new head coach. The 42-year-old Uruguayan succeeds Tom Cleverley, who was sacked on 6 May following the Hornets’ disappointing 14th-place finish in the Championship.

Pezzolano becomes Watford’s 18th permanent manager since Gianfranco Zola left in December 2013.

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For a side with such a horrendous record in the EFL playoffs, the way Sheffield United coasted through their semi-final’s two legs into the Championship’s showpiece game at Wembley did little to suggest they are a team with a hoodoo hanging over their heads.

In many ways, history is stacked against the Blades: nine previous attempts at the playoffs, five semi-final defeats and four heartbreaking final losses. But if there was one crumb of comfort for manager Chris Wilder and his side in missing out on automatic promotion with a couple of games to spare, it was the fact that they had time to regather themselves and prepare for the playoffs.

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Blades made no mistake in the second leg, completing the job and will head to Wembley after a record aggregate scoreline

3 min: Early snap shot from Twine, the ball falling loose after Ahmedhodzic’s touch. This time the forward can’t get enough purchase but a moment to get people wondering.

1 min: It’s a slow start. Tommy Cannon is the straight man to Kieffer Moore, rather than Bobby Ball.

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Régis Le Bris’s side have lost five in a row before meeting with Frank Lampard’s resurgent Sky Blues

Sunderland’s players are unlikely to forget Monday 28 April any time soon. Régis Le Bris’s squad were in Portugal, settling into a pre-playoff training camp when the lights went out as one of Europe’s biggest power cuts plunged the Iberian peninsula into chaos.

Although Le Bris made light of the inconvenience and emphasised that the Algarve sunshine had been “re-energising” no one is quite sure whether he has managed to fix his team’s own worrying electrical faults.

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Zak Vyner joined the club aged eight and as an ever-present this season is vital to hopes of getting past Sheffield United

When Bristol City’s players reconvened on Monday, there was only one place to start in the team meeting: those scenes of euphoria at Ashton Gate after the club secured a Championship playoff spot for the first time in 17 years, and the search party for Yu Hirakawa, who, as the captain Jason Knight puts it, was getting thrown about on the pitch as teammates waited in the dressing room for him to be retrieved. Liam Manning shared with his squad images and videos of supporters to underline the wider meaning, and footage of the Japanese winger crowdsurfing. “It got a laugh from the lads,” says Manning. “He was in a state of shock … I asked him: ‘Would that happen in Japan?’ He said: ‘No, never.’”

Now City, who entertain Sheffield United in the first leg of their playoff semi-final on Thursday, are hoping to enter uncharted territory. The Robins have not played in the top flight since May 1980 and Manning has heard the line about Bristol being the biggest city not to host Premier League football “a million times”. He is not the only one. The defender Zak Vyner, the longest-serving player who joined aged eight, was in the crowd at Wembley, aged 11, for the playoff final against Hull City in 2008, when Dean Windass volleyed in to break City hearts.

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• Cleverley first took job on interim basis in March 2024
• ‘Time has come for a change,’ says sporting director

Watford have sacked Tom Cleverley as their head coach after the club finished 14th in the Championship in his first full season. Cleverley took over on an interim basis in March 2024 and was given the job permanently last summer. After five wins since the turn of the year, and one point from the final five games, the 35-year-old has lost his job.

The sporting director, Gian Luca Nani, said: “We thank Tom for his service – not just in his role as head coach but for everything he has given Watford as a player and member of staff.

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• Solomon goal takes Leeds past Burnley to clinch top spot
• Live scores | Tables | Roundup: Leeds win title, Luton down

Portsmouth (4-2-3-1) Killip; Devlin, Shaughnessy, Atkinson, Ogilvie; Potts, Lang; Blair, Pack, Murphy; Bishop.
Subs: Schmid, Poole, Bramall, Dozzell, Hayden, Gordon, Ritchie, Saydee, O’Mahony.

Hull (4-2-3-1) Pandur; Lewie Coyle, Egan, Hughes, McLoughlin; Crooks, Puerta; Kamara, Gelhardt, Joseph; Joao Pedro.
Subs: Lo-Tutala, Jones, Lincoln, Burns, Alzate, Drameh, Amrabat, Palmer, Burstow.

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Five teams fight to avoid joining Cardiff and Plymouth in dropping to League One on the season’s final day

It is high season for engravers, a fertile few weeks for after-dinner speakers to make hay at elaborate end-of-season dos, but not every Championship team has something worth celebrating. Last Saturday, three hours after Cardiff’s players sank to the turf when the final whistle confirmed their relegation to the third tier, a division the club has not played in for 22 years, the squad slipped into suits for their annual black-tie awards night in a suite overlooking the same surface.

At some point, Rubén Sellés, the Hull head coach, seemingly got wind of the jarring circumstances and cancelled his team’s bash, which had been scheduled for Tuesday, to prevent a similarly tone-deaf evening.

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Tom Brady, Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney’s celebrity status isn’t the only thing that led their clubs to the Championship

It’s been over four decades since Wrexham were last in the second tier of English football and a lot has changed in that time. (A lot has changed in four years, never mind four decades.) Four years ago, Wales’ oldest soccer club were at a non-league nadir. Now, they are preparing for life in the Championship, propelled to three straight promotions by the stardust (and money) of Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney.

Birmingham City’s second tier exile was much shorter – just a single season – but like Wrexham their promotion had the spotlight of celebrity on it. While Wrexham have Reynolds and McElhenney, Birmingham have Tom Brady (albeit it in a far smaller profile). The English lower leagues have never been so glamorous, what with Wrexham players appearing in Marvel movies and David Beckham attending matches.

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• 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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