Players who decide not to play

All is not well at the John Smith's

From a Championship point of view it was a key game for Birmingham and their manager Lee Clark. His side had dropped into the bottom three a week earlier having collected just one point from four games.

They are a team that certainly have the capacity for not turning up defensively. They were horrific at the back at the Turf back in September and more recently were worse when Leeds hit them for four in front of the television cameras.

To add to that, Clark was going back to the club that sacked him so it was perhaps no surprise that they went there and returned with all three points, but it was a game that upset both managers.

Clark was disappointed to see Kyle Bartley, the defender they have on loan from Swansea, sent off. It was for two yellow cards; the second coming when he scored his second goal of the game and celebrated over excessively according to referee Gavin Ward.

I've seen the incident and that's nonsense. No shirt was removed and he didn't get as far as the crowd. Not only that it was his own fans, the Birmingham supporters at that end.

Clark said: "Football is an emotional game. Kyle hasn't enticed the Huddersfield fans. He has gone to celebrate with his own fans and common sense should prevail."

I'm not over inclined to agree with Clark on too many matters, and my Sunderland supporting friend will certainly delight any times he suffers and injustice, but this decision was just ridiculous.

On the subject of decisions; what about the one made by the Huddersfield players? "For whatever reason the players decided not to perform," manager Mark Robins said after the game.

Recently he claimed three players had been left out of the team for the good of the club. One of them, Anthony Gerrard, returned but there has still been no sign of Adam Clayton or ex-Claret Martin Paterson.

Pato is apparently out with a hand injury. Far be it for me to make any suggestions as to how he sustained that injury but the overall story here is that all is not well at Huddersfield. Could Robins been the next manager to leave his job? It wouldn't surprise me.

All is very much well just a few miles away at Elland Road. They saw their game at Charlton delayed because of a waterlogged pitch at The Valley. When it did eventually go ahead they won with Ross McCormack scoring all four in a 4-2 win.

He's the second player to score four in a game this season; Jesse Lingard did for Birmingham on his debut against Sheffield Wednesday, but it's the first time a player has netted four times in an away Championship game since Craig Davies scored four for Barnsley at Birmingham in September last year.

McCormack is now the Championship's leading goalscorer with eleven league goals. Danny Ings is one of two with ten goals while Sam Vokes is alongside James Vaughan with nine goals. For McCormack that is now six goals in his last two games.

As for the table; our lead has extended to two points thanks to Little Billy of Nottingham going on the rob at Leicester. I think it is fair to say they were fortunate to win this one but they owed a great deal of gratitude to former Burnley loan player David Nugent.

He had one of those days in front of goal when no matter what he did he wasn't going to score. He's scored two more penalties than any other player in the league so far this season but he even missed from the spot. He still smiled.

Forest moved up one place to fifth but it is the same top six but down at the bottom Sheffield Wednesday returned to the relegation places with a 3-0 defeat at Derby.

"There's only one John Ryan," sang the Doncaster fans at Barnsley. Did he score the winner? No, the game ended 0-0 but Ryan resigned as chairman. He'd recommended a bid from Sequentia Capital for the club but his fellow directors, Dick Watson and Terry Bramall, turned it down.

It looks a bit of toys out of the pram stuff to me and now Watson and Bramall intend to accept the offer. There's no going back for Ryan though who had a further snipe at his former boardroom colleagues before saying: "It's finished. I'm quite happy to come along as a fan but it's the end of the road for me."

To end, and I can't resist this after the worries of last season, we are now 23 points clear of the bottom three.

The results and stats from the weekend are below along with the leading goalscorers, the red and yellow card counts from each club, the top ten and bottom ten attendances and the weekend fixtures.