All bets are off when it comes to the Sky Bet Championship, as we well know, but no season has ever embodied just how unpredictable the division can be than the current 2021/22 campaign.
Just anyone can beat anyone, or so it seems, this season. Take fourth-placed Blackburn Rovers, for example. Tony Mowbray’s side suffered a 7-0 defeat to Fulham at the beginning of November, but the Lancashire side have since gone on to claim 16 points from a possible 18 since that regrettable loss.
That was the same Cottagers side who, a month earlier, went down 4-1 to Coventry City. And, incidentally, Mark Robins’ men were dealt a blow to their promotion hopes by Luton Town at the end of September, when Sky Blues were knocked down a peg by the Hatters in a 5-0 drubbing.
“Everybody likes to dream and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t because that’s what football is all about. You don’t want to put a ceiling on things. We remain as one of the lowest budgets in the division, but everybody knows what we are and where we are. To find ourselves where we are in the table is absolutely fantastic."
- Mark Robins, Coventry City manager
But nobody is immune to the unexpected twists and turns in the narrative and the curveballs it throws out, as the Hatters themselves found themselves on the wrong side of the same score-line to Birmingham City earlier in August.
And on it goes!
It’s almost impossible to call the shots in the Championship but that’s just what adds to the entertaining and exhilirating nature of the division.
“It’s full of drama. We’re in a race to get promoted again and it’s much of the same really. I hope we can get promoted this season and have a bit of drama.
“I honestly think we could play two strong starting XIs in the Championship, I really do. There are people that don’t make the bench that you could argue would start in a lot of Championship teams.”
- Tom Cairney, Fulham captain