A Championship full of draws

Nine card Deadman at Pompey

The league's beginning to settle down after most clubs have played eight games, and to ensure there is some normality about it we've now had our first managerial sacking with Sean O'Driscoll being replaced by Dean Saunders at Doncaster.

Our opponents tomorrow, Nottingham Forest, I suppose, got the result of the weekend. They were the only team to pick up an away victory with an Ishmael Miller enough to give them all three points at Watford.

Watford are still searching for their first home win of the season. That sounds familiar after our draw with Southampton, but it's not just us and Watford. Barnsley and Bristol City are also searching for a first three pointer in front of their home fans. We were the last team to win away last season, we don't want to be the last to win at home this time round.

One notable statistic from the weekend games is the total of 35 yellow cards. That's not particularly high, just one short of three cards per game, but incredibly no less than 19 of them came in two games.

There were 10 at Brighton on Friday with both the home club and Leeds picking up five. Perhaps there was no surprise there. Those two clubs have the worst disciplinary records in the division. The referee was Lee Probert who has not generally been over generous with the cards.

The same can't be said for Darren Deadman who was at it again at Portsmouth. There were nine yellow cards with six of them picked up by visitors Blackpool. Deadman is again becoming an official to avoid, he's now just two short of a half century of cards this season. This is a referee with over 750 cards in just over six years.

Looking at the league table, the top five clubs have pulled between four and six points ahead of the rest and probably the one that surprises me there is Derby who looked anything but a good side when we beat them recently.

I wish I wasn't seeing us so close to the bottom of the league but I don't think anyone can be too surprised with the three clubs occupying the relegation places right now, Coventry, Bristol City and Doncaster. All three were tipped to struggle before the kick off.

The league table is interesting right now if you look at the teams we've played so far. We've played the top three, four in the top six, and all but one of our games, the home draw against Watford, have come against teams currently in the top half of the table.

We've now got two games this week against teams a lot closer to us - hopefully giving us a real opportunity to get away from those bottom positions.

The results, stats, leading scorers, disciplinary records, high and low attendances and the next fixtures are all below.