The Best League in the World...

So a blistering start, dogged performance and excellent yet unexpected result enable us all to kick off the New Year with refreshed optimism. (Well me at least anyway, I have to admit that the dire performance against Ipswich coupled with the home draw with Derby had left me fully expecting a trouncing at Vicarage Road and perhaps even a panic decision at board level and an abrupt end to Sir Chris’s tenure as manager. Thankfully I was wrong).

It is pretty hard to predict how things will swing on a match by match basis in this division. Which is what makes it so exciting and keeps the interest of pretty much every sides support in the division right up to the final knockings of the season come early spring.

When you look at our own story since that game against Cardiff, and I’m pretty sure at the time we all expected a lesson in football and how to really finish a team off by the Welshmen. Certainly not the 5-4 rollercoaster that we were treated to.

This started a run that saw our aspirations lurch from looking at those below us and hoping we can keep our noses in front to looking at sixth place and wondering if now we’d turned the corner we might just sneak into the play offs come May, back to relegation worries and after yesterday’s excellent result a renewed optimism that we can at the very least enjoy looking forward to the release of the fixture list for 2013-2012 season without seeing fixtures against the likes of Crewe, Carlisle and Wallsall. (No offence to these sides but they are hardly ‘glamour’ ties by any stretch of the imagination).

A 7 match unbeaten sequence turning into a run of 6 games without a win. Interestingly of our 19 point haul during this period 12 of our points came against teams who are now in the top half of the table whilst we dropped 11 points against teams from the bottom half.

Real vindication for the generally held view that the Championship is a league where anyone team on their day can beat any other regardless of position or standing, making it one of the most entertaining and exciting in the world. It was in fact last season the fourth best attended league in Europe, behind only the Bundesliga, Premiership and La Liga and in front of Serie A by over two million.

With a welcome break in the shape of a home cup tie against Huddersfield and the January transfer window now open to hopefully enable Powell to bolster the squad’s quality and experience somewhat, we can now look forward to what on paper should be three potentially winnable games against Blackpool, Blackburn and Sheffield Wednesday.  But then like I say, it's pretty hard to predict anything in The Championship.