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In the Championship – Laws does it again
Both LBJ and Wilnis hit out at Laws after the game that saw Wigan go back to the top and left Ipswich ending the weekend three points behind the top two. They also admitted that the Wigan front two were a handful but claimed that their play was no always within the laws of the game.
It’s been a bad week or so for Ipswich with a third successive defeat and they have gone from six points clear of Sunderland to three points behind them.
As for Laws, he’ll just carry on refereeing and making more ridiculous mistakes that will cost other clubs. Nobody has taken any action against him in some eight years so they are hardly likely to start now.
Suddenly a few other clubs look to have been dragged into the relegation battle as four of the bottom five all won. The only losers were Rotherham who went down to Gillingham 3-1 at Millmoor. Time really is up for the Millers now and it is just a matter of waiting until it is all a mathematical certainty.
Ronnie Jepson has taken over after match duties and heaped praise on his players as the Gills won away from home for only the second time this season, and we know where the other win was.
That win could have seen them pull away from Forest and climb above Coventry to get out of the bottom three for the first time since September but incredibly both these team won away from home as well.
For Forest, not only was it an important win for the points but also for local pride as they went to the Walkers Stadium and beat Leicester 1-0 with a goal from Gareth Taylor. The former Burnley striker is back up front now after a spell playing as a central defender and has yet another new partner in Scott Dobie.
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Coventry meanwhile won a second successive away game as they recorded a 3-2 victory at Watford. Their first goal was scored by recent recruit Trevor Benjamin but he put it in with his arm and I think referee Mike Thorpe must have been the only person in Hertfordshire who didn’t see it.
The did go on and score two good goals though in the second half through Claus Jorgensen and Micky Doyle whilst Bruce Dyer and Danny Webber scored for the Hornets.
The talk was not about football at Ninian Park but about the financial crisis that has suddenly become public. The Cardiff fans have naïvely believed everything in the garden was rosy under the stewardship of Sam Hammam but were hit last week with the news that they were close to administration.
They sold Graham Kavanagh to Wigan on Friday but it looks as though there will be more sales and this could leave them with one massive relegation fight as well.
As usually happens in these circumstances they went out and won the game, beating Sheffield United 1-0 with a goal from Joe Ledley fifteen minutes from the end but just who will be in the Cardiff side next week is anyone’s guess.
Rumours of ten more departures was ruled out by manager Lennie Lawrence but he couldn’t promise that more players wouldn’t be sold. “I can’t turn around and say there won’t be any more players sold but to say there’ll be ten like some of the rubbish being written says is patent nonsense,” said Lawrence.
“It makes a good headline but it really is patent nonsense. Will there be more departures? Quite possibly but ten out next week. No.”
The fans turned on Hammam outside the ground before kick off and were less than impressed with what he had to say to them.
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Those results certainly pulled the rest of the bottom half of the table a lot closer with Leicester and Plymouth now just above that bottom four.
Plymouth’s two home wins in the previous week now look vital but they couldn’t find any away form to go with it and despite Derby turning in another poor home performance it was enough to win the game 1-0 with another Inigo Idiakez free kick.
Plymouth’s two home wins in the previous week now look vital but they couldn’t find any away form to go with it and despite Derby turning in another poor home performance it was enough to win the game 1-0 with another Inigo Idiakez free kick.
There is one club dropping like a stone right now and unless they arrest the slide they could be in some serious trouble. Crewe went to Elland Road on New Year’s Day and beat Leeds 2-0 but it has been a dreadful run since with just four points from nine games and they have conceded nineteen goals.
They were sat up in eighth place after that win at Leeds and Dario G was talking about the play offs. He’s gone quiet now and on Saturday they provided Glenn Hoddle’s Wolves with a rare win.
Crewe even went in front through a Kenny Lunt penalty but in the end the 4-1 scoreline didn’t flatter Wolves as both Carl Cort and Kenny Miller scored twice.
It is certainly no Carnival de Paris for Dario G right now and he was honest enough after the game to admit that his side had been outclassed by a Wolves side that started the game with the same number of points as Crewe.
There had been rumour that Hoddle might be on his way out of Molineux but this should keep him there a while longer. That might not be the case for two London managers whose jobs are very much under threat.
It’s all going wrong again for West Ham and Alan Pardew. They have dropped out of the top six after going down 2-1 at home to Preston where they contributed heavily to their own downfall.
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Tomas Repka didn’t bother staying too long either, he was sent off for headbutting Preston’s Brian O’Neil. Mind you he was on the pitch for longer than two minutes and thirty eight seconds.
Referee Steve Tanner might have had little choice with Repka but O’Neil was hardly touched and went down as if he had been shot. Even Patrick Agyemang got a goal in the second half, the big signing who is struggling to get a place in the starting line up before the fast declining Bobby Zamora scored a late consolation.
That wasn’t the end of the fun either with news of a tunnel bust up after the game although there is no confirmation of just what happened.
Pardew was far from happy with the Preston side and said, “We could have handled the situation better as a team and that’s a problem we’ll look to address but I’ve never seen my players so incensed with the some of the antics on the pitch.” He described it as an ugly game.
Ironically Pardew’s former club Reading climbed back above them into the play off places with a 0-0 draw at QPR. That’s a good result for Reading these days, as good as they get. A run stretching back to Christmas has seen them fail to win any of their last eleven games.
The last time they won was on the day Burnley beat Wigan and that left them level with the Latics on points. Today they trail the league leaders by fifteen points.
If Pardew is under pressure at West Ham then there’s good news for football purists with suggestions that the little nasty piece of work at Millwall could soon be on his way.
Dennis Wise has the full support of his chairman, the partially deaf Theo Paphitis, but it appears that once Paphitis is back in ladies underwear he might not be getting anything like the same support from the new chairman.
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If he does go then he leaves a club that has announced it will have to make cuts after losses of some £1.5 million. No wonder, they have let Wise run up a wages bill of £8 million that can hardly be sustained with the attendances at Millwall.
They attracted only around eleven and a half thousand yesterday for their home game against Leeds which ended 1-1. Paul Robinson scored his first Millwall goal to give them the lead but one of the Leeds loanees Rob Hulse was on the mark again to earn a point with a second half equaliser.
We’ll end our look at the weekend matches as we started, with a referee influencing a result. It was another north east official Colin Webster, he recently made a mess of our home game against Leeds. Twice in the last six minutes of the first half he harshly pointed to the penalty spot for Stoke against Brighton and the Potters won 2-0 with Gifton Noel-Williams converting both of them.
We’ve mentioned the loan signing of Marlon King by Leeds and Wigan signing Graham Kavanagh from Cardiff and there were a couple of other clubs strengthening their squads.
Crewe paid £170,000 for Shrewsbury’s 23 year-old defender Darren Moss whilst Colin Levein added two defenders to the Leicester squad. He paid £100,000 for KKMC’s Patrick McCarthy and then signed Darren Kenton, he who makes a habit of injuring Burnley players, from Southampton on loan.
There are three fixtures in midweek as clubs start to catch up on postponed games followed by a virtually full fixture list at the weekend – we are one game short with Leicester involved in the FA Cup. We wish them well next Sunday as they represent the Championship.
The Weekend Results | |
Friday 4th March | |
Burnley 0 Sunderland 2 | . |
Saturday 5th March | |
Cardiff 1 Sheffield Utd 0 | Rotherham 1 Gillingham 3 |
Crewe 1 Wolves 4 | Stoke 2 Brighton 0 |
Derby 1 Plymouth 0 | Watford 2 Coventry 3 |
Leicester 0 Nott'm Forest 1 | West Ham 1 Preston 2 |
QPR 0 Reading 0 | Wigan 1 Ipswich 0 |
Sunday 6th March | |
Millwall 1 Leeds 1 | . |
The Weekend Stats | |
Biggest win | Wolves 4-1 v Crewe (away) |
Total goals scored | 21 |
Player scoring most goals | Carl Cort (Wolves) |
Highest Attendance | 27,581 - Derby v Plymouth |
Lowest Attendance | 4,367 - Rotherham v Gillingham |
Total Yellow Cards | 22 |
Total Red Cards | 2 |
Most cards in a game | West Ham v Preston (6Y 1R) |
The leading scorers (league only) | |
22 | Nathan Ellington (Wigan) |
18 | Dean Ashton (Crewe) - now with Norwich |
16 | Paul Furlong (QPR) Kenny Miller (Wolves) Jason Roberts (Wigan) |
15 | Darren Bent (Ipswich) Shefki Kuqi (Ipswich) |
14 | Grzegorz Rasiak (Derby) |
13 | Dave Kitson (Reading) Teddy Sheringham (West Ham) Marcus Stewart (Sunderland) |
12 | Carl Cort (Wolves) Richard Cresswell (Preston) Stephen Elliott (Sunderland) Marlon Harewood (West Ham) David Healy (Leeds) - 5 with Preston Heidar Helguson (Watford) |
11 | Danny Webber (Watford) |
10 | Robbie Blake (Burnley) - now Birmingham Lee McCulloch (Wigan) Peter Thorne (Cardiff) Paul Wotton (Plymouth) |
9 | Bruce Dyer (Watford) Paul Shaw (Sheffield Utd) - 2 with Rotherham Tommy Smith (Derby) |
The Week's Fixtures | |
Tuesday 8th March | |
Burnley v Leicester | Watford v Nott'm Forest |
Sheffield Utd v Crewe | . |
Saturday 12th March | |
Burnley v Rotherham | Preston v Wolves |
Coventry v Cardiff | QPR v Watford |
Crewe v Sunderland | Reading v West Ham |
Ipswich v Nott'm Forest | Stoke v Sheffield Utd |
Leeds v Gillingham | Wigan v Millwall |
Plymouth v Brighton | . |