Around One – Knight at it again

Barry Knight - at it again with another dreadful mistake

This is the referee whose actions have got Sam Allardyce, David Moyes and Stan into trouble, Stan got a two match touchline ban, and he has now been blasted by Neil Warnock after missing the most blatant of penalties when Michael Tonge was brought down.

Within a minute Norwich went in front with a goal through Iwan Roberts, so reminiscent of what happened on the Turf when he strangely disallowed a Gareth Taylor goal against Wolves.

The win though keeps Norwich two points clear of West Brom who did us a favour by beating Watford at the Hawthorns. The Hornets have decided to try and attack their way out of trouble and opted to play with three strikers. It didn’t work and the Baggies were very much in control with Geoff Horsfield scoring another two.

With Knight’s intervention the top two are pulling away with Sheffield United now five points behind with 49. Behind them come Sunderland, Ipswich and Wigan all on 47 points and none of them won.

Ipswich earned themselves a point in a 1-1 draw at Coventry coming back with a goal from Ian Westlake but it was a game they should have won. Now the in form team away from home the Tractor Boys are undefeated in the last ten on their travels, their last defeat away from Portman Road was at Sunderland in September.

Sunderland had their game called off late because of a waterlogged pitch at the Stadium of Light and of course the obligatory flying litter. Presumably all the Preston fans were trapped at Durham services by the police as Phil Prosser, having realised he had forgotten his red and yellow cards, called the game off.

Shaun Goater - two goals for Reading against Derby

And we are thankful to them both as they saw off Rotherham and Derby respectively with West Ham winning 2-1 and Reading 3-1. A name very familiar to the Clarets was back on the goalscorers list at the Madejski, that of Shaun Goater. He scored twice having netted only one goal since August. And we are due there this month.

Gillingham are 16^th after beating BRBC and the significance there is that none of the eight teams below them won with only the Clarets and Forest picking up a point.

Forest’s was also in an away 0-0 draw, theirs at Cardiff, where Gareth Taylor thankfully missed the chance of the day with an easy header that he put wide.

The rest of them were all beaten, we’ve reported on most of them. Bottom club Franchise went to Selhurst Park where the game was held up for 40 minutes. This was not because of crowd congestion with the Franchise supporters, none of them apparently could find Selhurst Park, but due to some structural problems on the two old stands in the high winds.

It made no difference as Palace won 3-1 with Andy Johnson, the division’s form striker alongside Horsfield, getting another two goals.

If you want to make an impact when you go to a club on loan then you cannot do much better than Danny Dichio who has moved to Millwall from West Brom for a month. He scored twice on his debut against his former club Sunderland and on Saturday repeated that with both goals in their 2-1 win at Crewe.

Dario G was fuming with the stoppage time winner, coming immediately after a missed chance by Crewe and said, "Then they go down the other end and the slowest player on the pitch (Dichio) was able to run across the goal and get a shot in."

Finally Stoke moved into the top half, yes it does take some believing that a side as bad as Stoke can be that high, with a 3-2 home win against Walsall. Carl Asaba scored twice, his first goals for four months.

The weekend’s results made no difference to our position in the league, we remain 19^th and two points clear of the bottom three. We did though pull one point clear of both Derby and Watford.

Next week sees Gillingham return to the Turf in a full fixture list on Saturday with all games kicking off at 3:00 p.m. unless otherwise shown.

BRBC v West Ham United
Burnley v Gillingham
Derby County v Cardiff City (1:00 p.m.)
Franchise v Norwich City
Ipswich Town v Wigan Athletic (5:35 p.m.)
Millwall v Stoke City
Nottingham Forest v Coventry City
Preston North End v West Bromwich Albion
Rotherham United v Reading
Sheffield United v Crystal Palace
Walsall v Crewe Alexandra
Watford v Sunderland