The Championship: The League No One Wants to Win!

One might think I am referring to the Spanish La Liga but oh no! The English championship, second tier of English football.

With as many as seven title contenders so close to the line and as many as four different league leaders in the space of a month clearly suggests that no one wants to win the league.

Last night's results brought a new leader in West Brom after their late win at Blackpool but it wasn't many weeks ago when they were hammered 4-1 by relegation battling Leicester City.

Bristol City, Hull town and Stoke City have all bottled it when on top and unfortunately, I can see West Brom doing the same.

So bizarre is the league that Crystal Palace, a team with no chance of winning automatic promotion, can string together an unbeaten 15-match run and still have a mountain to climb to achieve it. While Norwich, still threatened by relegation, also went 13 games without defeat and still find themselves towards the bottom of the league.

Watford went six games without a win and are still in with a realistic shot of winning automatic promotion.

The same could not be said of Arsenal, who in similar circumstances have blown their chances of winning the title. This was also over a six game period.

A really funny thing that I came across while touting the Championship pages was a tiny niggling statistic. Colchester, who are sitting rock bottom of the league, have scored more goals than Bristol city, who are sitting second in the league. Now, how does Bristol City manage to score less goals than a team they are 34 points above, is beyond me.

If we compared that with the Premier League. Derby are sitting rock bottom and Chelsea are second from the top. The goal difference between the goal's scored by the two teams is 42 goals.

It's a league where anybody is capable of beating anybody. For instance, Coventry City beat West Brom 4-2 at the Hawthornes and West Brom beat Coventry 4-0 at the Ricoh Arena. Leicester City beat Coventry 2-0 at the Walkers Stadium and Coventry beat Leicester 2-0 at the Ricoh Arena. Just recently Southampton, who are fighting for survival, beat Bristol City 2-0.

All this brings me to my point, that no one actually wants to win the league. Are they scared that if they go up they'll end up like Derby?

Derby have looked embarrassingly out of their depth in the Premier League.