Welcome to the latest installment of the EFL Championship roundup, where your hoddler-in-chief takes a look around the second tier in the English football pyramid.
For this month’s roundup I am going to look at three different football clubs suffering from three horrible managerial choices they recently made. A couple of these faces may not surprise you:
Coventry: First up is Coventry, who seemed to forget what a shambles of a club it was before Mark Robbins took over. Robbins brought the club to the doorstep of the Premier League just a couple years ago before losing to Luton Town in the playoff final. A year later, and without Victor Gyokeres and Gustavo Hammar, he nearly did it again.
Coventry have massively struggled this season and are currently in 16th place, 12 points adrift of sixth. Playoff hopes are virtually zero. But instead of sticking by their manager, Coventry cut bait and sacked Mark Robbins on 7 November.
His replacement? None other than Frank Lampard, coming off horrible spells at Everton and Chelsea. Will this work out any better? No, because I don’t think Lampard’s a better manager than Robbins.
Hull City: It was shocking to me that Hull City parted ways with Liam Rosenior at the end of last season. Hull had one loss in their last seven games and Rosenior brought them up to seventh in the table (a position they should not have been in given their squad).
Again, like Robbins, Hull let him go.
They brought in a maanger named Tim Walter (never heard of him) and a tonne of random players. At the same time, they lost two of their best players in Jean Michael Seri and Oscar Estupinan.
Where are Hull City now? 22nd out of 24th and currently looking for a manager.
Plymouth Argyle: It’s actually kind of surprising Plymouth Argyle are sticking by Wayne Rooney for now. While the first two clubs made mistakes in sacking Robbins and Rosenior, Plymouth are making a mistake by keeping Rooney.
It was a bizarre appointment from the start. Argyle are not a good club, so it was strange on Rooney’s part to accept something where he will likely not succeed. Argyle have won two games in their last 10 matches across all competitions and sit 21st in the table, just above Hull City.
He responded with their lastest drubbing (a 4-0 loss to Bristol City) by briefly taking responsibility before slamming his players. Plymouth have a -20 GD !!!
I’m not sure where it goes from here, probably somewhere between 22nd and 24th. Who knows, maybe he won’t even be around long enough to find out.
EFL Championship Top Six:
EFL Championship Bottom Three:
Fitzie’s track of the day: Submarine, by L’Imperatice
And now for your links:
Jack P-B ($$): Spurs’ injury woes have ‘blunted their edge’ with no respite coming
Bonus from The Athletic ($$): What Tottenham can expect from Tamworth
BBC on what being ‘Spursy’ means to Tottenham fans