Buzzin Championship Football

It’s what every premiership club dreads – Relegation to the English Football League.

Many top flight football clubs are faced with the prospect of being earmarked for relegation during the festive period. With the Premiership tables being crammed full of football clubs with wealthy backers, it seems somewhat a dreadful situation for them to know to have spent millions on players and managers only to see results fall flat. Ultimately relegation looms. We can just look at Newcastle United for such a classic example last season. Newcastle was a sad story of mismanagement which actually started off as being quite promising. A rich multi-millionaire in Mike Ashley with a long standing clothing business bought the club in 2006 but where things turned sour was the continuation of the infamous revolving door policy for managers which led to all kinds of instability in the dressing room. Players lost interest and the club’s results slid until they were demoted in 2009 to the Championship via a lack lustre performance against Aston Villa – a match they had needed to win.

A club like Newcastle United, who enjoyed 16 years of the premiership football and they have begun their Championship campaign with gusto, much to the surprise of sports pundits. Some football bookmakers on the online betting circuit had faith in seeing the Toon promoted with odds of 15/8 back in August 09. Not bad considering that Newcastle United had just dumped its talisman, Alan Shearer, in favour of the untested Chris Hughton as manager at the time. However, the last thing a club would want to know is the betting odds; the first priority for any ex-Premiership club was to get rid of the excesses and there usually are plenty of them in player wages.

Players who expressed no desire to play on were quickly shown the door. In the case of Newcastle, those players were Damien Duff (undisclosed), Obafemi Martins (£9m) and Shay Given (£6m). Obviously, the sale of high profile players would help cushion some of the blow of reduced income from TV and sponsorship deals. That coupled with a parachute payment which totalled around £12m for dropping a league down.

Compare this to being in the Premiership, where a club get £38m just for being in that league and that’s discounting other lucrative deals on top. Ticket prices are normally affected as well with 8-10% price reductions to try and entice disgruntled fans back into stadiums as well as keeping those all important season ticket holders. Right now, Newcastle can comfortably fill around 42-49,000 spectators for a home match which is nothing to be sniffed at. Newcastle United has always been credited for having a large hardcore fan-base and this season so far has proved nothing less.

Both West Brom and Newcastle have adapted well to life in the Championship whilst Middlesbrough have been the surprise strugglers despite the help of the newly recruited, Gordon Strachan. Newcastle had to do much more to bolster its chances for promotion at the start. Much to their credit, there work has so far paid dividends, with a club managing to keep a lot of its past season’s players who have so far proved that a class above the rest in this league.

A higher wage bill will probably be the price to pay for returning to the Premiership.  Some may argue that playing in the Championship has done Newcastle more good then if they experienced another hapless season in the Premiership. Just look at them now as they have got rid of some deadwood and now play with certain ambition in them that has led to back-to-back wins – a feat they could not achieve in the past few years in the top flight league.

The Premiership 2009-2010 season is just as tight at this stage with three out a possible 11 teams trying to avoid the drop. Like Newcastle United before them, Portsmouth have been handed the uphill task of trying to regain some kind of form against a dire backdrop of boardroom controversies.

Will they be relegated to the Championship? A betting man will no doubt put money on it.

paul hart qpr coach

Queens Park Rangers have parted company with suspended manager Jim Magilton, the former Ipswich manager left the club late on Wednesday night by ‘mutual consent.’

Claims that Magilton had head butted midfielder Akos Buzsaky following the game at Watford on December 7th were denied by the outgoing manager, but QPR have decided to move on with yet another new coach at the helm.

Former Portsmouth coach Paul Hart has been handed the job at Loftus Road and he will be joined by Mick Harford who will work as his assistant at Rangers.

Hart becomes the fifth ‘full time’ manager to arrive at QPR in the last two years, Harford is among the list of caretaker managers that have served during that same period.

What can Paul Hart bring to QPR that John Gregory, Luigi de Canio, Paulo Sousa, Iain Dowie and Jim Magilton couldn’t manage?

Portsmouth believed that Hart was instrumental in keeping the south coast club in the Premier League last season in what was a difficult season for the club both on and off the field.

However the coach was not offered a full time contract until this season was well under way and then within a few weeks of signing he was sacked by Portsmouth with the club at the bottom of the league table.

It is fair to say that Portsmouth have been a better team this season than their results suggest, but moreover it is impossible to assess a club that has struggled financially and seen many of its key players move away.

QPR do not have those problems, but they do face the problem of expectancy, they are a well financed club that expects to be fighting for promotion and are currently falling well short.

Personally I cannot see Hart or anyone else for that matter, getting a long enough run to win over the management at QPR and as I said when Magilton joined the club it is akin to accepting the poison chalice.

Jim Magilton managed the club for 23 games, Paolo Sousa lasted for 26 while Ian Dowie stayed for 15 games. Not a great record, and I believe the results of those constant switches can be seen in the results on the pitch.

Good luck to Paul Hart, a really nice guy who deserves a break, but I can’t really see him being at Loftus Road come the end of the season.

Watford Leisure, the owner of Watford Football Club, could fall into administration by close of business today if demands to repay loans of £4.9 million are not met.

Chairman Jim Russo and senior board members Vince Russo and Robin Williams resigned at the club AGM on Tuesday and immediately demanded the repayment of £4.9 million of loans to Valley Grown Salads, a business that the Russo’s have a stake in.

Watford FC will automatically face a ten point penalty if they do go into administration, dropping them from current tenth in the league on 30 points, to second from bottom of the Championship.

Former manager Graham Taylor has taken over as temporary chairman of Watford, but no comment on the financial situation has been made as yet.

Could former owner Elton John help his much loved club out?  Well he is planning a concert to help raise funds for the club in May next year, but that may be too little too late for the club.

brian laws sacked

Sheffield Wednesday have predictably parted company with Brian Laws following the 3-0 defeat to high flying Leicester City, that plunged the Yorkshire club into the Championship relegation zone over the weekend.

Despite the urgency of Laws dismissal, the Owls say they are in no rush to sign a replacement manager, with the Academy boss Sean McAuley taking the reins as caretaker boss.

In a statement from the club, Wednesday chairman Lee Strafford praised the efforts of Brian Laws, particularly in his first two years with the club;

“A very positive legacy has been left by Brian in terms of the quality of the playing squad we now have at Sheffield Wednesday and we will now focus our attentions on securing the right manager to help these players push up the league in the short term and make us competitive for a return to the Premier League in the long term.

Brian has put in an immense amount of work as manager at this club and he should be remembered for some genuine achievements on the pitch and for stabilising Sheffield Wednesday in the Championship.

We are very fortunate to have someone of Sean’s capabilities within our club to drive change and ensure that Sheffield Wednesday’s best interests are served. We will not rush into the next permanent appointment as this will be a key appointment in terms of determining the long term future of our club.”

Northern Ireland manager and former Sheffield Wednesday player Nigel Worthington has thrown his hat into the ring according to media reports, his contract with the International team expires at the end of the year and he is said to be considering his options for the future.

Worthington told the Belfast Telegraph;

“Let’s be honest about this, in two weeks time I will be out of work and I have to weigh up my options. I spent 11 great years at Sheffield Wednesday as a player and the club means a lot to me. If the opportunity arose to speak to them, then I would have to listen to what they have to say. It would only be fair to myself and my career but at this moment in time there has not been any contact and I am still under contract with the IFA and enjoying working with Northern Ireland.”

Others who are being tipped for the Wednesday shortlist include Darren Ferguson who was recently sacked by Peterborough and former Burnley coach Steve Cotterill.

jim magilton

Queens Park Rangers have suspended manager Jim Magilton pending an internal investigation relating to an incident in Monday night’s 3-1 loss to Watford at Vicarage Road.

The suspension takes immediate effect and Magilton has been told to stay away from the club until they have conducted a thorough investigation into the incident that is believed to involve a ‘bust up’ between the manager and QPR player Akos Buzsaky.

Magilton is reported to have been involved in an angry confrontation with the player in the changing room after the game, with Patrick Agyemang attempting to calm the situation. Buzsaky is alleged to have left the dressing room early in the wake of the confrontation.

A statement on the QPR website gives no further information, saying:

“The club can confirm that manager Jim Magilton has been suspended with immediate effect, pending an internal investigation. The suspension relates to an incident which occurred at Monday’s Championship fixture against Watford at Vicarage Road.”

QPR started the season in fine form, losing just one from the first nine games, but recent results have gone against them and they have picked up one point from the last four games. To add to their woes, Monday’s beating by Watford followed a more humiliating 5-1 home loss to Middlesbrough on Saturday.

Magilton was brought in this summer as a replacement for Paulo Sousa who lasted for 26 games in charge of the perhaps over ambitious London club.