The Championship '21-'22

Was wondering if anyone caught any pieces of the 2-2 draw between Scott Parker's Bournemouth Cherries and West Brom last night. I watched a bit this morning, and I gotta say, Bournemouth looked nothing like his Fulham teams. The fact that they spat out two one goal leads sorta did. But they didn't play patty cake in front of their own keeper, and actually tried to get forward most of the time. Makes you wonder, doesn't it?

 

What a match coming up on Tuesday - Bournemouth vs. Nottingham Forest for the controlling or even winning the last spot for automatic promotion. If Bournemouth wins, then they get the final automatic promotion spot. If Forest wins then they take over second place based on goal differential going into the final game of the season.

 

Nothing against Scottie Parker, but pulling for a Forest victory today and high drama on the last match day for the silver medal and that gauaranteed promotion.

UPDATE: Bournemouth won 1-0 and are up.

 

That Bournemouth win brought up memories of Parker's playoff win with Fulham against Brentford. The late deciding goal came from the person no one was thinking about scoring at that moment. In the case of Fulham it was Joe Bryan who scored while all eyes were on Mitrovic. For Bournemouth it was Billing who provided the distraction as he pantomimed thinking about where to place his free-kick on goal. Instead of shooting he slotted it to Moore, the January transfer making only his third substitute appearance, who was entirely unmarked and got the winning goal. Bournemouth almost blew it as they decided to forgo possession for the eight minutes of injury time, but Forest could not convert their late chances.

 

While the final day of the Championship was benign, League Two was bonkers.

Bristol Rovers won automatic promotion after sitting 17th in the table on Jan 1 and overcoming a five goal differential in the second half of the final match of the season.

https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/61364370

 

Playoffs kick off today with Luton hosting the first leg against Huddersfield. The Terriers are my favorite to go up, but these are all good teams at this point and anything could happen. A lot of attention has been paid to Nottingham Forest's incredible run at the end of the season, but Huddersfield was pretty incredible too - they only had two losses in 2022. Huddersfield is also the only team in the playoffs to have a win this season against all of the other teams in the playoffs. Although I think Huddersfield have the best shot, I want Luton to win - it is a great small club success story, it would be nice for Don, and selfishly I think Luton would be the most likely playoff team to finish below Fulham in the Premier League

 

Brice Samba - just wow. Single-handedly (and footedly) picked up a defeated Nottingham Forest team and carried them to Wembley. Sheffield United generally looked like the better team in this matchup, but Samba's goal-keeping heroics during regulation and the deciding shoot-out foiled the Blades. I'm still sticking with Huddersfield to get the last promotion spot.

Side note of complaint from the first leg of this match on a pet peeve of mine - why in the world would Sheffield United fans (or any fan) start to leave before the final whistle of the first leg? Sure they were down 2-0, but fans were streaming out when the fixture hadn't even reached its half-way point. Would it make sense to leave a match before halftime when they were down 2-0? I hope they felt terrible missing the late goal that gave them a chance. Why would you choose to miss that drama just to get out of the grounds a little earlier?

 

Nottingham Forest won the playoff with Huddersfield 1-0 to earn promotion to the Premier League. Forest was better in the first half, but only got the lead because of an unfortunate deflection that lead to a Huddersfield own-goal. The second half was controlled by Huddersfield but it became yet another example of how worthless VAR is. Huddersfield should have been awarded penalties on two separate occasions, but got neither. Both were cases where it appeared in real-time the right non-call had been made, but on replay both showed what should have been penalties for Huddersfield.

Forest's promotion probably makes achieving safety a little more challenging for Fulham since they will likely have more money available than Huddersfield would have.

 

More money, and they don’t have the owner’s son picking the team. Forest were deserving of promotion. They were clearly the best side of those left vying for the third promotion spot.