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The highlight of the midweek fixtures came at Fratton Park where visitors Franchise were able to do anything Aston Villa could do. Just 24 hours after Peter Enckelman’s classic own goal in the Birmingham derby Franchise contrived a worthy candidate for own goal of the week from central defender Mark Williams. He hit a back pass to keeper Kelvin Davis and then watched in horror as the keeper let it roll under his foot.
Portsmouth pulled in over 18,000 but it was clear from the television pictures that the open away end was full. Surely Franchise haven’t found any fans have they? The answer is no, with so few expected a section of just 100 seats was roped off for them and the home fans were given the rest of the ground. Needless to say they did not fill the over generous allocation of 100 seats, numbers are yet to be confirmed but over half the seats remained empty.
There was the league’s second hat-trick of the season with Marlon Harewood scoring three in Forest’s 4-1 over Gillingham and these were his first goals of the season. David Johnson added another and he was not the only ex-Claret on the mark.
Alan Lee was at it again, scoring twice for Rotherham in their 4-3 away win at Walsall whilst Andy Cooke grabbed the winner for Stoke at Brighton. This leaves Brighton struggling near the bottom with just four points and three of those came at the Turf on the opening day of the season.
Grimsby remain rooted to bottom spot and when you are down there your luck is definitely out. They took the lead with yet another goal from a former Claret, former loan player Paul Robinson. The 23 year-old striker is on loan at Blundell Park from Franchise and this was his first goal in first team football since he scored in three consecutive 3rd Division games for Darlington in February and March 1998.
Back to the game though and having gone in front after just eight minutes they held it until conceding two goals in the last eight minutes as Sheffield United stormed into fourth place.
With Portsmouth and Leicester occupying the top two places it is now Norwich, Sheffield United, Rotherham and Coventry in the play off places whilst the relegation positions are currently held by Walsall, Brighton and Grimsby. Click HERE for the full league table.
The highest attendance at the midweek fixtures was the 24,651 who saw Leicester beat Bradford whilst a pitiful 3,669 turned up to see Brighton lose again at the Withdean against Stoke.
We will take a detailed look at the club’s attendances after the weekend fixtures.
With one or two of the early leading scorers finding the net the top scorers there are changes in the list.
First Division Leading Scorers:
7: Paul McVeigh (Norwich)
6: Darren Byfield (Rotherham)
6: Jamie Cureton (Reading)
6: Alan Lee (Rotherham)
5: Brian Deane (Leicester)
5: David Johnson (Nottm Forest)
5: Neil Shipperley (Franchise)
4: Malcolm Christie (Derby)
4: Richard Cresswell (Preston)
4: Paul Dickov (Leicester)
4: Ricardo Fuller (Preston)
4: Shefki Kuqi (Sheffield Wednesday)
4: Phil Mulryne (Norwich)
4: Svetoslav Todorov (Portsmouth)