Championship review: A new Beale wobbler at Sunderland; Leeds on super streak; Sargent silencing Norwich doubters

Leeds United’s winning streak is still going strong, Josh Sargent isn’t causing any problems at Norwich City these days, and it’s starting at Sunderland now that Mick Beale turned down his handshake offer. All of this and more from the most recent Championship round…

TEAM OF THE ROUND

Leeds United

This weekend, Leeds United defeated Plymouth 2-0 to win the Championship for the eighth time in a row. Leeds’ record in a perfect 2024 so far is as follows: since the streak started on New Year’s Day, they have played eight games, won eight, drawn none, lost none, scored 19 goals, given up one, and accrued 24 points.

After an outstanding first half display, which was capped off by Billy Gnonto’s fifth goal in his previous five games across all competitions, this most recent triumph was quite simple. As the game entered the final 20 minutes, Georgia Rutter’s goal kept things safe despite Plymouth being much more competitive in the second half.

It makes sense that a run of this kind would have a significant effect on a team’s season. Last year, after beginning a fantastic ten-game winning streak in second place with a two-point promotion cushion, Burnley finished with a 17-point cushion and was able to ride their luck to victory.

Leicester started the season early this year, winning nine straight games till the end of October, which gave them a 14-point buffer for promotion after just 14 games. Leeds’s winning streak has had a comparable effect.

At the start of it they were back in fourth place and on the chase, they’re now in second place and the eight games has seen them gain eight points on both Leicester and Southampton and 12 on Ipswich. The Leeds super streak has redrawn the battle lines in the promotion race, if they keep it up significantly longer we might just be looking at the key moment in the unfolding of this season’s extraordinary fight to reach the Premier League

PLAYER OF THE ROUND

Joshua Sargent Norwich City

As Norwich’s Josh Sargent, a striker, well illustrates, context is essential in football. After Norwich returned to the Premier League in the summer of 2021, the US international joined, able to afford to spend a little money on players in an attempt to keep the team afloat. The summer spend on Sargent, Tzolis, Rashica, Kabak, and Gilmour was viewed as a catastrophic recruitment blunder as Norwich finished the season at the bottom of the table.

Eighteen months later, the situation has completely changed, with Sargent now considered to be essential to the Canaries’ bid to reclaim the Premier League.

Sargent started the season with four goal contributions in his first four games before an injury in late August saw him sit out almost an entire four months of the campaign. He returned at the very end of 2023 and has picked up exactly where he left off banging in seven goals in his last eight Championship appearances. Aside from the 10 goals in 13 appearances this season, Norwich with Sargent are an entirely different proposition to Norwich without Sargent.

While the American was out injured Norwich picked up 24 points in 20 games, while he’s been fit Norwich have picked up 27 points in 13 games. That’s 1.2 points per game without Sargent and 2.07 points per game with him and the brutal points based maths says Norwich are 72% better with Josh Sargent in their team. With the Canaries in the thick of the play-off chase, they’ll want to keep their key man in the thick of the action.

TALKING POINT OF THE ROUND

The Sunderland Sulk

Pretty much every Saturday my social media timeline will get filled with examples of the same hyper viral Championship football clip of the day. This weekend’s instalment was the substitution of Sunderland fullback Trai Hume who exited his side’s game at Birmingham in the 87th minute.

That wasn’t the story though as Hume was seen to offer a handshake to his manager Mick Beale who seemed to ignore his player and of course, all hell broke loose. As with many fallouts in life, the thing that appears to be the issue is not actually the issue and there are several other layers of suspicion that need to be peeled back to understand the reaction.

You see, Mick Beale has rightly or wrongly become a bit of a lightning rod for fans’ dislike and this latest episode will be added to his charge sheet in the court of public opinion. QPR fans will tell you Beale promised them the earth and then did a runner to Rangers, fans of the Glasgow club will tell you he was a failure at Ibrox, while suspicious Sunderland  fans see Beale as the guy that their trigger-happy ownership replaced the highly likeable Tony Mowbray with.

Now add in the extra ironic wrinkle that Sunderland had surrendered a lead and were about to lose to a Birmingham side managed by none other than Tony Mowbray. Beale tried to pour water on the issue post match by saying he didn’t see Hume and he’d apologised, he’s got a way to go though to improve his approval rating with the Black Cats fans.

LOANEE OF THE ROUND

Ike Ugbo, who is on loan from Troyes to Sheffield Wednesday

The longer term tendency in the fight for Championship survival is that the tide is rising at the bottom, despite the weekly ups and downs. Sure, Rotherham may appear lifeless at the bottom of the standings, but QPR and Sheffield Wednesday are also in the bottom three and haven’t been playing like relegation candidates lately.

During a Championship season, a point per game usually gets you through, and QPR is well above that with 22 in their previous 16 games; Wednesday may surpass that with 23. Those streaks obviously began prior to the transfer window, but both teams tried to increase their goal total in January, and Wednesday may have discovered the solution with Ike Ugbo’s arrival on loan from  Troyes in the French second tier.

Ugbo is doing double loan duty in the Championship this season having spent the first half of the campaign at Cardiff, scoring four goals in 20 league games. The good news for Wednesday is he’s already one away from that total for the Owls after his double in the win against Birmingham and the opener in yesterday’s key win over Millwall Here’s the issue though, as Ugbo also had a fast start at Cardiff with three of his four goals coming in his first five games including one against Sheffield Wednesday.

At risk of being overly simplistic, teams are at the bottom of the league because they don’t make enough good chances and they give up too many. The value of having someone who can put away what service he gets is priceless, let’s see if Ugbo can maintain the hot start this time around.