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Monday, 19 May 2014

Who were the Championship under achievers last season?

At the start of a season everyone hopes to do well and yet only a few teams can ever be successful. That leaves a good many fans disappointed at their team's performance of over a season, but who were the real under achievers in the Championship in 2013/14?

 If we say that those in the top six have all had good seasons I may have to question even that. With the squad and money that has been thrown at QPR you can't say that they can consider third place a truly successful year and Harry Redknapp will surely feel that things have not gone entirely their way. I also believe that Wigan might have done a bit better if they had played with the kind of endeavour they had in the second half of the season right from the start, but Uwe Rosler may well have had something to do with that. His appointment has them moving in the right direction.
Leeds Utd were the most disappointing team for me last season.
Blackburn and Ipswich have both improved since the 2012/13 season and their managers have made them harder teams to beat. But all is perhaps not quite well at Reading who seem to have a split between fans who like Nigel Adkins and those who don't. I see difficult times ahead for the Royals and they may find that the Premiership is going to be out of sight for some time to come from what I saw of their players. Without new owners Reading could even be in trouble next season.  
Leeds players ready to kick off at Dean Court.
The real under achievers though for me are Nottingham Forest, Middlesbrough, Bolton, Watford and wait for - the biggest of them all Leeds United. These clubs sit in the middle of the Championship and yet have some of the best paid players and quality squads. I think Watford, Nottingham Forest and Middlesbrough perhaps have a case for managerial changes affecting their seasons a little, but I don't think it made a big difference at Bolton and Leeds United who don't seem to be any closer to getting it right on the pitch than 12 months ago.
It was all too easy against Leeds Utd.
You can argue a case for Charlton, Birmingham and Blackpool also under achieving but I feel that Charlton over achieved last season and Birmingham and Blackpool hit the self destruct button more than once during this last season. These three have not got the biggest budgets, but need a lot of team building to survive next time around. The loan system certainly wasn't great for Birmingham City.  

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3 comments:

  1. Unknown19 May 2014 at 07:22

    To call a team under achievers, firstly you need to get all the facts about that team, yes we had a managerial change but that would have had no effect on us. You may recall up until february, forest were well placed just outside the automatic places, unfortunately for us we then went on to have the worst lot of injuries I have ever seen 1 team have. No word of a lie there were times we couldnt even put out a team where we had 1 single first team player. On average we were missing 10 players each game sincr feb. On the last game of the season we had a whooping 16 players out for one reason or another. I no people will see it as an excuse as its part and parcel of football but you rip 10 first team players out of Leicester or burnley or any team and see how it effects you. We definitely did not under achieve given the circumstances.

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    1. Anonymous19 May 2014 at 08:32

      Too right teams like Bournemouth would not have beaten our first 11 who were almost all missing Hopefully a different training regime will lead to less injuries and we will battle for automatic this season

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  2. Unknown19 May 2014 at 13:53

    Cherry fan living in Derby, injuries or not I watched the first A52 derby (I won't call it clough derby, he was a ram) in Long Eaton, I saw nothing from either team to be afraid of, despite the fact we'd not yet fully adjusted to level. Injuries and shall squads are no excuse, we used to phone schools before matches to ask if we could take kids for the bench

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