Another weekend of games in the Championship where the top four seem to be doing everything they can to avoid getting promotion!

Just what is going on at the top? Last week I wrote an article with my tongue firmly in my cheek saying that Watford were handling the pressure so much better than all the others. As some of you pointed out, that is, of course, absolute rubbish. It seems that none of us are handling the pressure and we are all performing in more ways than one like the Chuckle Brothers. 'To me, to you'.

Bristol City had a potentially difficult game at home to play-off chasing Plymouth. However, Plymouth had lost at Scunthorpe of all places during the week. Not only did City lose, to make it four without a win, they let Rory Fallon score two goals. I’ve got a friend who supports Swansea. He tells me that Fallon was the biggest waste of money he had ever seen.

‘Only really Hull out of the chasing pack are showing any sort of consistency, with four wins in their last six. ’


West Brom had the easiest task of the day at home to Leicester who had just fallen into the drop zone. All was looking good when Robert Koren blasted them into an early lead. Luke Moore then did his bit to challenge for the two-footed tackle of the season award and West Brom found themselves down to 10 men. Shouldn’t be a problem against Leicester, already one-nil up, I hear you say. What followed couldn’t have been predicted by anyone. West Brom fell apart and conceded four. That gave them just one point from two home games last week.

On to the big game at Vicarage Road between the Glory Hornets and Stoke City. To be fair to Watford they didn’t play too badly. Watford captain, and former Stoke captain, John Eustace got a bit carried away and he was rightly given an ‘early bath’ by Rob Styles, making an unexpected and rare correct decision. So with Watford down to 10 men after 23 minutes, you’d expect Stoke to begin to dominate proceedings. Not a bit of it. They rarely troubled Watford and took their run to only one win in the last five.

As for Watford, well, as I say, they didn’t play too badly and when we got awarded a fortunate penalty when Styles made an expected, not too rare poor decision, big Darius Henderson would step up and give us the three points. He’d cost us two points at Bristol City in midweek by missing a penalty, so there was no way he would do it again. Darius, the fans love you but you’re really pushing it now! So that’s six without a win for us.

Only really Hull out of the chasing pack are showing any sort of consistency, with four wins in their last six. So it does appear that two of the ‘big four’ are going to have to go up whether they like it or not!

What a pundit would normally do now is to list the remaining fixtures for the four teams and predict their results. It is impossible to do that in this league this season. With Stoke being the only team in the top four to win in their last two games, and that was against Norwich who can’t buy a point apart from against Watford, how can anyone predict what will happen now?

The run-in is going to be full of twists and turns and excitement, but I can’t help but feel that the teams who lose the fewest games, not win the most, will be the ones who crawl into the Premier League. On that basis, with six draws in a row, Watford might just do it.

The tension is becoming unbearable. I am already having nightmares about the play-off final at Wembley. Big Darius steps up to take the penalty that will take us up ...