Championship – The Race for Second Place

The Championship closes its curtains on the 2012/2013 season tomorrow afternoon with battles going on at both the bottom and the top half of the table. 7 teams remain involved in the fight to stay in the league while 4 teams are contesting the two remaining spots in the play-offs.
Despite all of that, most of the attention will surely be on the two teams that are battling it out for the final automatic promotion spot for a place in next seasons Premier League.
Second placed Hull City welcome league champions Cardiff City while Watford, just a point behind in third place host Leeds United. A win for The Tigers will guarantee them second place but any other result puts that in jeopardy if Watford win or even draw as The Hornets currently possess a far superior goal difference. The way the table has been set up means that we are now potentially in for one of the most dramatic ends to a league season there has ever been.
Having looked at recent form, you would have to say that momentum probably belongs with Watford right now. Unbeaten in three, their last victory came a week ago when they defeated play-off hopefuls Leicester City 2-1 at The King Power Stadium with the highlight of the match coming from Nathaniel Chalobah, the 18 year old loanee from Chelsea who scored the second goal for his team in that game in sensational style with a 35 yard rocket shot. Their upcoming opponents Leeds have been pretty woeful this season. When these sides last met earlier in the season when Neil Warnock was in charge, Watford ran out 6-1 winners at Elland Road, and despite a change in management last month, new boss Brian McDermott and his team have nothing left to play for but pride after losing their last two games against Birmingham City and Brighton & Hove Albion respectively. The likely outcome of this match should be a Watford victory as long as Gianfranco Zola can keep his team’s feet firmly on the ground and avoid the classic last day slip up as we have seen so very often from teams on the verge of glory in the past.
Hull have only picked up one point out of a possible nine in their last three matches and opponents Cardiff would surely have been one of the last choices of teams that Steve Bruce would have wanted his boys to face on the final day of the campaign with so much at stake. Defeat last weekend at relegation threatened Barnsley will surely have done his side no favours for confidence and he will have surely worked his socks off this week in training to get his team motivated to go out and try and win the game at The KC Stadium this weekend. While they’ve obviously got a great chance, they are up against the team that managed to go one step further and win the Championship title with two games to spare. Regardless of that, Malky Mackay will surely be expecting his team to perform the same way they have all season and not allow Hull the easy passage into second place.
I predicted back at the start of March on here that I thought Watford would finish in second and I am sticking to that prediction as the end draws ever nearer. I cannot see Leeds getting a result from Vicarage Road tomorrow which gives the home side all 3 points, and if Hull were facing a team in a similar position I would have backed them for victory as well, but they aren’t, they are facing the league champions, and I am certain that Cardiff will want to show on the last day exactly why they are champions and given the amount of quality they possess in their ranks, I can’t see Hull getting anything more than a point from this game which won’t be enough if Watford win. But even if that prediction is wrong, I know my next one won’t be, and that is that no matter which team gets the right and wrong results, the end to this nPower Championship season is going to be a memorable one for all involved.
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