First published in Racing & Football Outlook January 3-9, 2012
We are now past the halfway stage in the Championship so there’s no
better time to look back over the last five months to see who has and
who has not performed up to expectations and what that means for the
second half of the season.
It’s always good to start the season with a strongly held contention
that comes good and that was certainly the case in going against the
chances of Leicester.
The Foxes started 2011-12 as short as 5-1 with some bookies and that
was a great starting point for some early season easy pickings given
that they had little going for them apart from a relatively chunky
purse and an incoming big-name manager in Sven-Goran Eriksson.
Their biggest failing was a very low Outlook Index base from which to
build and the sense that it would require more than money and the
Swede to bring about the level of change needed.
After a couple of months at the Walkers Stadium, what little remained
of Eriksson’s reputation was all but burnt out.
Even so, and even with my most pessimistic hat on I didn’t expect his
time at Leicester to be so short and, while I knew that price to be
well short of reality, I had Leicester down to be in the top half of
the table with a bid for a play-off place to look forward to –
neither of which are a given.
On the plus side for Leicester fans, Eriksson has left and at least
they didn’t pull out the really short straw of a former England
manager that goes by the name of Steve McClaren.
The story of McClaren’s time at Forest is a particularly miserable one
for all concerned with no-one associated with it coming out of the
whole thing with much credit.
While the blame for Forest’s poor start cannot be 100 per cent
directed at the occasional Dutchman, since he left results have
started to pick up a little, even if they’re still a long way from
being the
10-1 shots that Boylesports thought them at the start of the season.
So, in the case of Leicester and Forest, it’s clear that neither are
going to be challenging for the top honours.
However, it’s also plain that the division is yet to be dominated by a
single team and it’s hard to see at this point which side, if any, is
going to take an imperious position.
I hoped Birmingham might come good given that their price was a little
on the pessimistic side but it does look as though the effects of Alex
McLeish’s departure and the legal issues surrounding the club’s owner
have been sufficient to damn their chances of an immediate automatic
return to the Premier League.
Equally, the strength of the clubs above them is such that it seems
increasingly unlikely, on the basis of my numbers, that they will even
make the play-offs.
For the moment they are forecast for a sixth-place finish but, such is
the closeness of the competition, they could still drift even further
down the league.
The clubs above them are a motley crew, though, and with less than ten
points separating the top six it’s far beyond the stretches of
imagination that any of them could, with a relatively consistent burst
of form, come through to take the title.
Southampton have obviously made the biggest leap in terms of progress
this season. Yet, for all the great work that Nigel Adkins has done,
they could easily finish the year missing out on automatic promotion,
although I think a place in the play-offs is all but assured.
The biggest concern for their supporters should be around whether the
side can maintain the consistency that took them to the top.
Consistency, as always, is the key to success, and never more so than
in the Championship, which is why we’ve seen no dominant team in the
competition yet.
There are half a dozen or so clubs with a shot at the title. Below
that group of six, however, is such a large collection of teams within
a few points of each other, that to take in all the potential
candidates for a surprise team to come through via the play-offs, we
have to scan down as far as 15th or 16th place.
