Results over the past seven days should show precisely how competitive and surprising the Championship ought to be – West Ham being walloped 5-1 at Ipswich was probably the most surprising result of the season. The leaders looked as if they’d got back into the game just before half time, but Lee Martin’s penalty in first half injury time more or less killed off the game.

Perhaps a bigger surprise came the following day when Leeds sacked Simon Grayson after their 4-1 home defeat by Birmingham City. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, promoted teams often rely on momentum and euphoria to sustain them through their first season and problems can often arise when the momentum becomes inertia. A lot of people – myself included – thought Leeds could kick on this season and mount a serious promotion challenge, but that’s not been the case and it’s easy to see why: their home form has declined since last year. Their current defensive record at Elland Road is worse than four of the current bottom six teams and only Peterborough have kept fewer home clean sheets.

Despite the surprises, nothing really changed. The top three are the same, although they can’t be caught this weekend. It’s not entirely clear who will be top this evening, but we’ll come to that in a minute. At the bottom there’s now a five point gap between Millwall and Doncaster and that could be significant – since February 2005 at least two of the three teams in the relegation zone have been relegated, although last season was the first time since 2005/06 that all three clubs at the bottom of the table at the beginning of February went down.

There are no less than three televised Championship games this weekend and so I make no apologies for focusing on them, especially as one is game of the week. The best way to preview these is to start at the beginning…at the Boleyn Ground at lunchtime where Millwall make the short trip across the Thames to play West Ham (Sky Sports 2, 12:30pm). The Lions have never beaten West Ham away from home and although they won at Barnsley (thanks to a hat trick from Darius Henderson) a couple of weeks ago they’ve not won consecutive away league games since the spring. As for West Ham, I can imagine Sam Allardyce will want to put Tuesday’s defeat behind his side as quickly as possible, especially as there’s a real prospect that the Hammers could end the day with a five point lead.

West Ham’s chances of extending their lead at the top also depends on the result of Birmingham v Southampton (SS2, 5:20pm) which is not only game of the week but better entertainment than what’s on BBC1 at the same time. Only five points separate the teams in second and fourth place at the moment and with Birmingham having moved into the play off spots after winning at Leeds, this evening’s game is an opportunity to for them to establish themselves as genuine promotion candidates. The Blues have won the last five games between them at St Andrews and Chris Houghton’s side still haven’t been beaten at home this season. I’d be surprised if Southampton came away with a win, but my recent predictions haven’t exactly been flawless.

This weekend’s programme finishes literally and metaphorically with a derby game – Nottingham Forest make the short trip to Pride Park (BBC1) where they won last season but haven’t managed consecutive away victories against Derby for over twenty years. The Rams have won their last four home games with teenage striker Callum Ball scoring three goals in those games – he’s definitely one to keep an eye on. It appears that Forest have worked out how to score goals again, but meetings between the clubs in Derbyshire are usually tight games: one team has failed to score in seven of the last ten.

The transfer window ‘slammed shut’ during the week and most of the last minute moves involved West Ham, who signed Ricardo Vaz Te from Barnsley, Nicky Maynard from Bristol City and Ravel Morrison from Manchester United. Probably the most interesting move was Marvin Sordell moving from Watford to Bolton – the 20 year old striker made his debut for the England U21 side last September and presumably Owen Coyle thinks he’s ready to be a success at the next level.

If Southampton win and West Ham lose at Ipswich, the Saints will go top. If Cardiff win, they’ll move into second place regardless of how West Ham do and the Bluebirds will also have a two point advantage over Southampton. If it’s a draw and the Hammers win, Big Sam and company will have a five point lead at the top at the end of January – the same situation as QPR were in at the end of January 2011.

So what can expect from tonight’s games? Well, unsurprisingly to regular readers Southampton v Cardiff  is yet another one of those games where one side seems to be at a tremendous disadvantage. Cardiff have been awful at Southampton over the years – the last time the Bluebirds won a league game at the Dell was in October 1962 and they’ve only picked up two points in the ten games on the South Coast since then.

Moving away from the long term outlook, a look at this season’s form indicates that one side may be a flash in the pan and the other is consistent if not spectacular. Cardiff have only lost two away games in the league this season and are currently on an eight game undefeated streak on the road as well as looking forward to the Carling Cup final in a few weeks time. Since losing 4-3 at Peterborough in mid October the Bluebirds have kept four clean sheets in seven games and only West Ham and Hull have conceded fewer away goals this season. To put that another way, Cardiff have conceded eight fewer goals away from home than this time last year: that’s the type of form that wins promotion. Remarkably, this is a totally different Cardiff side to last season’s – only Darcy Blake and Peter Whittingham from the team that started at Doncaster were in the starting eleven in the disastrous playoff semi final against Reading in May.

In contrast, Southampton’s fantastic start to the season at St Mary’s (ten consecutive wins) has hit the skids in recent weeks. They’ve not won at home since Boxing Day and failed to score in their last two games. Although he’s been suspended recently, top scorer Rickie Lambert hasn’t scored at home since his injury time equaliser against Blackpool on December 10th and Nigel Adkins decision to sign Billy Sharp from Doncaster shows how serious the goalscoring issue is. In the past I’ve discussed how important momentum is to newly promoted teams and it would appear that Southampton’s may have run out a little earlier than they were hoping.

There could also be some implications for the rest of the season. After tonight’s game, the only home game Southampton have left against a side currently in the top six is against Reading in April – they still have to travel to Hull, Middlesbrough and West Ham. Although they’ve beaten those teams at St. Mary’s, it’s fair to say that Southampton don’t travel well. Cardiff are in a similar position: their only remaining away game against a top six side is at Middlesbrough (in March) and having already won at Hull and Reading, a third away victory against their immediate rivals could be vital in the next few months.

The other game that will have an impact on the top – and also potentially at the bottom – of the table is at Portman Road. Ipswich have been terrible at home recently- one win in the last seven games – and have obvious defensive issues, so it’s not a good time to be playing the league leaders. It also doesn’t help when West Ham are also one of only five teams this season that have scored 20 or more away goals and haven’t lost in a league game at Ipswich since Christmas 1989.

I’ll be back at the end of the week with a quick round up of the midweek games and a look forward to the weekend’s games – which begin and end with derbies – but I can’t help thinking that whatever happens at St. Mary’s this evening, West Ham will still be top.

Having wondered if  Birmingham might face a tricky trip to Sheffield United, it was nice to be proven completely wrong – the Blues were 2-0 up at half time at Bramall Lane and ran out comfortable 4-0 winners, with Adam Rooney nabbing a brace. Jermaine Beckford also scored twice for Leicester who beat Swindon 2-0 but easily the performance of the weekend was Brighton beating Newcastle 1-0 at the Amex Stadium although it took an own goal from former Watford and Portsmouth defender Mike Williamson to settle the tie.

Blackpool, Middlesbrough, Millwall and Southampton all face replays: Ian Holloway’s side had to come from behind at home to Sheffield Wednesday and only salvaged a draw courtesy of an injury time penalty from Kevin Phillips.  It was a similar type of story at the New Den as Rickie Lambert opened the scoring for Southampton but the Saints were pegged back due to a late equaliser from Darius Henderson. Middlesbrough bucked the trend by taking the lead at the Stadium Of Light, but couldn’t hold on.

Yesterday’s draw for the Fifth Round looks as if it could be a major obstacle for any of the clubs left in the competition – all six Championship teams that could take part have been drawn against Premier League opposition. Birmingham and Brighton have to travel to Chelsea and Liverpool respectively, while Leicester will play Norwich at the King Power Stadium. Whoever prevails between Millwall and Southampton will fancy their chances against Bolton: if Blackpool can win at Hillsborough they’ll visit Everton while Middlesbrough’s incentive to beat Sunderland at the Riverside is a home game against Arsenal.

Finally, Watford and Derby lost to Premier League opposition but Hull became the second Championship team to lose to Crawley Town in this season’s competition. Last season’s Conference Champions have beaten both the Tigers and Bristol City without conceding a goal: at this rate it may not be too long before Crawley feature in these posts regularly.

I’ll be back tomorrow to take a look at the midweek league games and a look at anything interesting that happened before the transfer window closed.

It’s the fourth round of the FA Cup this weekend and there are ten Championship clubs left in the tournament, but only one guaranteed spot in the fifth round. There are also two league games taking place this weekend and we’ll come to them later.

From a Championship perspective, the pick of the ties is this evening’s meeting between Watford and Spurs (7:45pm, ESPN) although it’s worth pointing out that The Hornets have never beaten Spurs in a cup competition and have only beaten Tottenham twice in 12 games at Vicarage Road. Having said that, despite their less than impressive league position at the moment, Watford have only lost two of their last ten home games and with the Premier League club having an injury crisis as well as a manager in the dock at the moment, the game could make very interesting viewing.

The rest of the cup ties this weekend are a mixed bag: arguably the biggest chance of an upset is at Pride Park, where Derby entertain Stoke City. In terms of upsets being caused against Championship sides, Birmingham make the trip to Sheffield United in a game that looks like anything but a straightforward and both Leicester and Hull will have to be at their best when Swindon Town and Crawley visit.

The only all Championship tie would normally be a candidate for game of the week: Southampton haven’t been at their best away from home recently (two wins in the last ten) and so the last place the Saints would probably want to visit at the moment is Millwall, who seem to have rediscovered the art of scoring goals recently.

However, once again this is one of those games where the away side has dominated the home team in recent meetings: Millwall have only won once in the last ten meetings between the clubs in all competitions in South London and you’ve got to back almost three and half decades to find the last time the Lions beat the visitors at home.

The other two televised games follow the same pattern as those of the Third Round. Newcastle haven’t played at Brighton (5:15pm, ESPN) for almost 20 years – and the last time Brighton played Newcastle in the Cup was in 1982/83, when the Sussex club reached the final and were beaten by Manchester United in a replay following the ‘…and Smith must score’ game. Despite having been knocked out of the African Cup of Nations, Newcastle will be without Senegalese strikers Papis Cisse and Demba Ba for the game.

ITV aren’t well known for changing what appears to be a winning formula and their coverage of the FA Cup seems to be evolving into ‘Sunderland v Championship club’ : Peterborough were the Mackems victims in the last round and this time they’re playing Middlesbrough (ITV1, 1:30pm). It’s been a while since they met in a Cup competition  when they weren’t in the same division, but it’s even longer ago since they met in the FA Cup at Sunderland: January 1934 to be precise, when Sunderland progressed to the Fourth Round after winning a replay at Ayresome Park.

There’s a full league programme on Tuesday night, but four clubs decided to bring forward their games to Saturday afternoon, which gives us a chance to take a look at two clubs that we’ve not mentioned recently. Game of the day in the league is Peterborough v Portsmouth: only two points separate them at the moment, but although Pompey have maintained their somewhat schizophrenic form this season (playoff material at home, bound for League 1 away), The Posh dropped out of the top ten in November and have only recorded two wins in their last ten games, so this is the type of game that could tell us how the rest of the season might pan out for these clubs over the rest of the season. Pompey were rocked by Tuesday’s news that they face a winding up order and could face administration – which is something  they’ll desperately want to avoid – a ten point deduction would automatically send them to the bottom of the  table.

With less than a week to go on the transfer deadline there’s still not been a great deal of activity, although Reading – who face Bristol City in the only other league game tomorrow have been in the middle of it. The Royals have signed Tomasz Cywka on a free transfer from Derby and Jason Roberts from Blackburn Rovers, but apart from some loan moves that’s been about it this week. However, by the time I preview Tuesday’s matches there may be news on more moves – including a possible conclusion to the Nicky Maynard saga.

Although Crystal Palace are slight favourites to qualify for the final, Cardiff are favourites to win tonight. Which might sound slightly barmy until you realise that the Eagles have only lost three of their last ten trips to the Welsh capital in all competitions and that Cardiff really need to win by two goals to have a chance of winning the tie within 90 minutes – something that the hosts are very capable of doing. The Bluebirds have only lost twice at home this season and so it looks as if it could be a tight game.

Palace lost at Blackpool on Saturday but Dougie Freedman did a fantastic job of emulating the managers in the Premier League by naming a team that included precisely none of the team that played in the first leg of the semi final. In contrast, Cardiff’s Malky McKay chose eight of the 11 players who lost at Crystal Palace in his starting eleven for the game against Portsmouth: it’ll be interesting to see which philosophy pays off later on.

With the weekend’s games not finishing until last night, it was always going to be down to the game between Southampton and Leicester to decide who was going to be top of the table going into the Fourth Round of the FA Cup. Unfortunately for the former leaders, Leicester ended their 40 year winless streak at Southampton – which meant that West Ham maintained their lead at the top of the table thanks to their win over Nottingham Forest on Saturday afternoon.

On the face it, Middlesbrough’s 3-1 defeat at Coventry was a shock, but Boro managed to pull of a reasonable impression of Millwall’s thrashing by Birmingham the week before – Kevin Thomson and Julio Arca were both sent off. Boro’s only win this year came against Shrewsbury in the FA Cup and they’re now five points adrift of the automatic promotion places.

Coventry’s win compacted the bottom three rather than made any impact on the teams above them: I’ve already mentioned Forest’s defeat at West Ham and Doncaster lost at Bristol City, results which leave the bottom three four points adrift from safety.

I’ll be back on Friday with a look at the two league games taking place this weekend as well as the fourth round ties in the FA Cup – the pick of which is probably Watford v Spurs on Friday evening – but I’ll post an update as soon as tonight’s game has finished.

Update: despite having scored both goals in the two ties, Anthony Gardner won’t be playing in the Carling Cup final. Cardiff City won on penalties and will play at Wembley.

Cardiff’s point at Doncaster shouldn’t have come as a surprise – as I pointed out last week the Bluebirds have a good record at Donny – but Middlesbrough chose last weekend to lose at home to Burnley for the first time in almost 30 years. Southampton and West Ham both won on the road and so in the space of an hour and a half the situation was back to almost exactly the same as it was a fortnight ago.

At the bottom of the table all six teams failed to win – Ipswich moved above Bristol City, but despite establishing a two goal lead over Blackpool the Tractor Boys failed to pick up three points. The biggest losers last weekend weren’t Millwall – although the dismissals of Adam Dunne and Shane Lowry during a 6-0 hammering by Birmingham isn’t exactly a contender for performance of the week – but Coventry City. The Sky Blues not only lost 1-0 at Pride Park, but Lukas Jutkiewicz joined Middlesbrough: the 22 year old striker was responsible for scoring nine of Coventry’s 20 league goals this season and his departure leaves a gap that may not be filled anytime soon.

The FA Cup replays took place earlier in the week: it was the turn of Leicester turn to stop Nottingham Forest from scoring and a hat-trick from Jermaine Beckford ensured that the Foxes will entertain Swindon at the King Power Stadium next weekend. Millwall took their frustrations out on Dagenham & Redbridge with three goals from Darius Henderson and a brace from Harry Kane and will play Southampton. Birmingham became the only Championship side to defeat a Premier League team in the cup so far this when a goal from Wade Elliott at Molineux saw the Blues into the fourth round. Brighton had to come from behind at the Racecourse Ground to beat Wrexham on penalties and will have a lucrative fourth round tie against Newcastle.

There are three candidates for game of the week this weekend: Doncaster visit Bristol City in the only game between teams in the bottom six and a win for either side could prove invaluable in the long term as current form indicates that Nottingham Forest won’t get anything at West Ham. So the choice this week is the potential playoff matchup between Reading at Hull at the Madjeski Stadium.

As you might expect from clubs in fifth and sixth place, neither club has a particularly strong record against the other clubs competing for promotion.  Despite an inconsistent start – as recently as the end of November they were in the bottom half of the table – Reading have only lost one of their last ten league games at home (to Cardiff) whereas Hull have lost at both Middlesbrough and Southampton in the last seven weeks. The Tigers don’t have a particularly good record in Berkshire, having only won twice in the ten visits to Reading since England won the World Cup and this looks like a difficult game for them, especially as Reading have won four consecutive games at the mad house and Hull haven’t been scoring much away from the KC.

Last game of the week is one the rare televised Monday night games outings for Championship teams when Leicester travel to St. Mary’s to take on the leaders (Sky Sports 1, 7:45pm) . If West Ham can pick up at least a point against Forest – which seems highly likely – than Southampton will have to make sure they don’t lose to Leicester. That outcome is also highly likely as this is yet another one of those games where history is favours one team. Leicester have failed to score in five of their last six games at either St. Mary’s or The Dell and have only won once on the South Coast since 1970.

Apart from Lukas Jutkiewicz’ move to Middlesbrough, there hasn’t been a great deal of business in the transfer market. Norwich have agreed terms with Leeds captain Johnny Howson and Ben Mee has joined Burnley from Manchester City but the two eye catching deals involve a player with no club and an ex-manager. Kelvin Etuhu – jailed for six months following a conviction for assault last year – has joined Portsmouth, while former Doncaster boss Sean O’Driscoll has joined Nottingham Forest as first team coach: if Forest continue their current form, it’s not inconceivable that O’Driscoll may find himself back in management sooner rather than later.

I’ll be back early next week with a round up of this weekend’s games and a preview of the second leg of the Carling Cup semi final. I’m also toying with the idea of having a full scale rant about a certain Premier League manager’s frankly ignorant ideas about having B teams from the Prem playing in the Championship, which I might save for next weekend…

This week as it’s more or less a case of ‘as you were’ in the Championship due to the FA Cup games last weekend and only one league game during the week when Birmingham beat Ipswich on Wednesday night. The Blues have now managed five single goal wins in the league at St Andrews this season: Nikola Zigic scored twice to move Birmingham two points outside the playoff spots with a game in hand and a much better goal difference than Hull.

The Serbian striker’s goal also condemned Ipswich to their third consecutive defeat. To make matters worse for the Tractor Boys – who have now lost ten of their last 15 games – under fire boss Paul Jewell made headlines for the wrong reasons following his post match comments about fourth official Amy Fearn.

After the irregular patters of the last few weeks and with the exception of the only televised game this weekend, we revert back to the traditional Saturday afternoon kick offs. With only two of the top six clubs at home this weekend there’s a chance that either Middlesbrough or Cardiff could go top if both Southampton (at Nottingham Forest) or West Ham (at Portsmouth) lose, while the only thing certain at the bottom end of the table is Coventry cannot escape the bottom three regardless of how they do at Derby.

By the time Reading kick off at Watford on Saturday evening in the weekend’s only televised game (Sky Sports 2, 5:20pm), there may be a new team at the top of the Championship for the first time since September – so it makes sense that Nottingham Forest v Southampton is game of the week.

Those of us of a certain vintage will remember the 1979 League Cup Final between these two clubs, but it’s extremely unlikely that Steve Cotterill will be forcing his Forest side to drink their way through a crate of champagne this evening to prepare for the Saints. Considering the recent ups and downs of both clubs it’s a surprising that tomorrow’s game is only their second meeting at the City Ground this century, but equally surprising is that the hosts haven’t scored at home in the league since Marcus Tudgay netted another injury time winner against Ipswich in mid November.

On the other hand, Southampton are beginning to look as if they’ve run out of momentum. The leaders have only won twice since the end of November and haven’t won an away game since beating Coventry at the Ricoh Arena on Guy Fawkes Night: Rickie Lambert’s equaliser at Portsmouth before Christmas is the only goal Southampton have scored in their last four away games in the Championship.

If Southampton stumble at Nottingham Forest, it looks as if Cardiff may be best placed to take over top spot. The Bluebirds travel to Doncaster – and not to put too fine a point on it, Rovers’ record at home to Cardiff is absolutely terrible. Since their first league meeting in September 1947, Cardiff have only lost twice in 15 games at either the old Belle View stadium or at the Keepmoat.

Finally this week, nothing much seems to have happened in the transfer market so far but there are persistent rumours that both Billy Sharp and Lukas Jutkiewicz may be moving from Doncaster Rovers and Coventry City respectively, with Leicester City (surprise surprise) being the destination for one or maybe even both of them. If both Sharp and Jutkiewicz leave their current clubs before the winter window closes, it’s probably safe to say that there’ll only be one relegation place left to fill…

The fourth round will in all likelihood weed out even more Championship sides, with three clubs (Middlesbrough, Derby and Watford) facing Premier League opposition, leaving only Hull and Blackpool looking reasonable chances for progress to the fifth round.

Of the four sides facing replays, only Birmingham City emerged with any real credit having held Wolves to a draw in the Saturday lunchtime kick off. Millwall failed to score away from home again (this time at Dagenham & Redbridge) and despite taking the lead Brighton were held at home by Wrexham. None of the clubs with unresolved third round games have easy looking ties in the next round if they win their replays – neither Nottingham Forest or Leicester will fancy a visit from Paolo Di Canio’s Swindon, who knocked out Wigan at the Country Ground on Saturday.

Four clubs were knocked out by opposition from Leagues 1 and 2, although they can all make the excuse that they’ll be concentrating on the league. Reading – who’ve reached the quarter finals in the last two seasons – lost to Stevenage, who the Royals beat last year. West Ham lost to a late goal at Hillsborough: Sheffield Wednesday have now knocked out Championship teams out of the cup in the third round in consecutive seasons without conceding a goal. Wednesday’s victims last season – Bristol City – lost at Crawley and Doncaster lost at home to Notts County: both of those last two games could be League 1 matches next season.

At least the Championship is guaranteed a place at the Carling Cup final at Wembley at the end of February, so hopefully Crystal Palace and Cardiff can provide two games to remember. It’s only really over the last few seasons that Cardiff have reversed a long term trend of performing badly at Selhurst Park: even though the Bluebirds lost their last visit in the league (to a single goal from South African international Kagiko Dikgacoi last March), they’ve won three of their last six meetings in South London. The only other time these sides have met in this competition was in September 1969, when Palace won 3-1: the hosts went on to win seven of the next ten meetings between them.

Looking at more recent form, a couple of things stand out: Palace will have to score at least two goals to win. The Eagles haven’t done that since mid October in the league, but they’ve managed it in every round of this season’s Carling Cup including the brace that beat Manchester United in the last round. The other stat that is worth remembering is that there’s not been a draw between these two in South London since December 1984 and both Palace (at home) and Cardiff (away) have been involved in a lot of undecided games recently: Cardiff’s only other away game in the Carling Cup was a draw at Oxford United back in August and the Bluebirds only won on penalties at the Kassam Stadium.

There hasn’t really been much to report in the transfer market, although the rumour mill is grinding out the usual stories (most of which involve anyone that’s ever scored a goal in the Championship being linked with Leicester), so the only piece of news worth mentioning is that despite overseeing three consecutive league defeats, Nick Barmby has been appointed as permanent manager of Hull City.

I’ll be back on Friday afternoon with a recap of tonight’s game plus a look forward to the action at the weekend.

We’re now past the half way stage in this season’s nPower Championship and results over the Christmas break have set up what looks as if it could be an exciting conclusion to this season’s campaign.

At the top, the clear winners over Christmas were Cardiff and Reading, both of whom have clearly put their playoff misery behind them. The Bluebirds are now only two points behind Southampton and West Ham and although Reading’s festive season ended with a defeat at the Cardiff City stadium the Royals are now back in the top five for the first time since August.

The holidays couldn’t have gone any worse for Southampton and Hull. The leaders could only pick up three points from the nine available and lost their undefeated home record when a goal from Stephen Pearson gave Bristol City a surprise win at St. Mary’s and Southampton’s first home defeat in the league since losing to Brentford in December 2010. Apart from Ipswich – who I’ll be discussing in a moment – Hull were the only side not to record a win in their last three games and lost all three by a single goal. A few more poor results from the Tigers could see them slide dramatically down the table: they’ve already lost ten games this season.

However, Derby were clearly at the top of Santa’s Christmas list, having won all three of their games – an especially impressive feat as the teams they faced were fellow competitors for the playoff positions. The Rams are currently two points away from the top six and Nigel Clough’s team seem to have got over their poor form in November, when they only picked up one point.

At the bottom, Bristol City and Coventry picked up six points in three games but even that feat was something of a false dawn for the Sky Blues, who went back to the bottom of the table after losing to West Ham. They’re now three points behind Doncaster, seven points from safety and face a real battle to avoid dropping back into the third tier for the first time since 1964. Follow strugglers Nottingham Forest ended their goal drought when Marcus Tudgay opened the scoring after five minutes in their 3-1 win at Ipswich, but the Tractor Boys only picked up one point in their three games and could be sucked into a relegation battle.

Ipswich have been terrible recently – nine defeats in twelve games have seen them drop from sixth in mid October to 20th going into next week’s game at Birmingham City. The East Anglian side have conceded the most goals in the Championship so far this season (only Doncaster have a worse away defensive record) and it looks as if their form at Portman Road will be crucial over the next month: Cardiff, Middlesbrough and West Ham all have to travel to East Anglia.

For at least one weekend all the Championship clubs can put the league aside: the third round of the FA Cup takes place this weekend. Although I’ve pointed out more than once that the chances of a second tier club winning the competition are remote, it’s also worth pointing out that Championship clubs have reached the quarter finals at least in each of the last five seasons.

Blackpool, Watford, Middlesbrough, Brighton & Reading seem to have the best chances of making it to the fourth round, while Burnley, Cardiff, Leeds and Portsmouth already look as if they’re the teams that are going to be concentrating on the league for the rest of the season.

Three games involving Championship sides are being televised, starting with Birmingham v Wolves (ESPN Saturday 12:30pm) – these two were playing in the Premier League last season, but both were in the second tier when they last last met in the cup sixteen years ago. On that occasion Wolves won the replay after a draw at St. Andrew’s, which looks like it could happen again as this game looks as it if could be short of goals.

Sunday lunchtime’s game between Peterborough and Sunderland (ITV Sunday 1:30pm) is only the third meeting between these two sides at London Road in all competitions, but the Posh will be hoping to avoid a repeat of the first time they ever played Sunderland: a 7-1 defeat in the fourth round of the cup at Roker Park in 1967. That scoreline is unlikely to be repeated, but I’d not be surprised if there are goals in this one: the hosts have only failed to score in one home league game this season but have also only kept one home clean sheet in the Championship in 2011/12.

The last game of the round is also the final game on TV: Leeds drew with Arsenal at the Emirates in last year’s competition before losing the replay at Elland Road so Monday evening’s game  (ESPN Monday 7:45pm) gives the Yorkshire side a chance of revenge. Thanks to the Leeds fans it should be a good atmosphere at the Library, but there are a couple of big problems for Leeds if they want to progress: they haven’t won away since November and it looks increasingly likely that they’ll have to contend with the second coming of Thierry Henry.

I’ll be back on Tuesday with a roundup of the notable stories from the FA Cup plus a preview of the Carling Cup semi final first leg between Crystal Palace and Cardiff City and any transfer news that’s worth printing.