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Birmingham: Premier league dreams, play-off anguish and losing your head

This is a funny old time of year for any team in the Championship. Depending on how you’ve fared, you could be singing, crying, or just plain tearing your hair out. Any team from the Championship can be sorted into one of these categories: 1) Promoted – this is the holy grail of this league,…

Npower Championship 2011/2012: Promotion and Relegation Review

The 2011-12 Championship league fixtures have come to an end and finally the automatic promotion positions have been confirmed. However, at the other end of the table, the relegation picture had been clear for some time. The bottom three teams can now begin preparation for a spell in League 1. Below are the final league…

Aston Villa: what if the problem is the club and not McLeish?

This Premier League season has been a memorable one, with the title race again going down to the wire and potentially being settled by a Manchester derby, the new arrivals Norwich and Swansea reminding everyone that the gap in class between the Premier League and the Championship actually isn’t all that great, and the relegation…

Most efficient Premier League clubs in the last three seasons (2009 to 2012)

Building on our previous post about the most efficient football clubs across Europe’s top four leagues this season, here we do an historical analysis of the Premier league and the best performing clubs in the last three years (2009/2010 to 2011/2012). The chart below shows some fascinating visual data about Premier League teams in the…

The Championship Race for Promotion: Southampton, Reading and the Play-Off Candidates

With 6 games to go in the season, the race for promotion to the riches of the Premier League is hotting up. It is seemingly a three-horse race for the two automatic promotion places on offer. Southampton and Reading are the two clubs currently in the driving seat but a strong West Ham United side…

Four things we’ve learned about British football rivalries

Newly compiled data from Hotelclub has thrown up plenty of interesting conclusions regarding Britain’s greatest football derbies. The company, who help football fans find cheap hotels in Manchester for the Manchester derby, get people into accommodation for the Second City Derby and give Fulham fans somewhere to hide after another thrashing from Chelsea, have looked…

Europa League Preview: Tottenham, Fulham, Stoke and Birmingham in a confusing European adventure

The draw for the group stages of this season’s Europa League has thrown up a number of difficult and interesting challenges for England’s representatives, with qualification through to the knock-out stages far from assured. This term it will be up to Tottenham, Fulham, Stoke and Birmingham to do the nation proud, and test their wits…

Alex McLeish is a big gamble for Aston Villa

Looking beyond the city rivalry, there’s plenty of ammunition for Villa fans to suggest that ‘Big Eck’ is not the right man for the job. Alex McLeish has won just 26% of his games as a Premier League manager, so far no Aston Villa manager with more than five games in charge has posted such…

Birmingham keep McLeish, but say promotion next season is a must

Alex McLeish has kept his job at St. Andrew’s, despite Birmingham’s last-day relegation to the Championship, but has been told by the board that he must lead the side back to the Premiership. The Blues went down, due to a defeat against Tottenham at White Hart Lane and other results not going their way, and…

Where to now for West Ham?

West Ham are down – but not out. Here are six points suggesting how they can rebound straight back up.