With
just under two months of the season left to go, the top of the
Championship table is looking incredibly tight, with the play-off
and promotion places changing after every game played.
At the time of writing, Birmingham City are currently in top spot,
by a single point, however in the last week alone, this position has
been held by Derby County and West Bromwich Albion.
Also lurking around the play-off places are Wolverhampton Wanderers
under the guidance of former Republic of Ireland manager, Mick McCarthy.
One of the most surprising aspects of the race for the championship
has been the inclusion of Sunderland, under the guidance of Irish football
legend, Roy Keane, who was awarded the Manager of the Month award for
February for his side’s push into the top six.
Having only retired from football last season after winning the SPL
with Celtic, eyebrows were raised across the country when Keane was
appointed the new manager of Sunderland by former Ireland team-mate
and Chairman, Niall Quinn.
From being in the bottom three when he took over, Keane has turned
the Black Cats around and they are now prowling the play-off zone,
looking for an opportunity to pounce into the automatic promotion spot
to turn around a remarkable season, which has taken time to kick into
gear.
As ever, on hearing of his award, Keane was his normal forthright self.
He said: “I cannot get my head around why people give out awards
during the season. The time to reflect on any season is at the end
of it, and if the team deserves something, then you give the team the
awards, not individuals and certainly not the manager.
“It’s a nice reflection on the team, but the award will
probably go in the garage. The players deserve all the credit. They
are the ones who have got to cross that white line and do the business,
and that is what they have been doing.
“I am not a great one for these individual awards because ultimately,
it is a team game. If it were about individuals, these lads would not
be playing football, they would be playing tennis or snooker.
“But they are playing for a team. Some days you have your off
days, and that is when your team-mates help you out.”
In his six months at the helm, the Black Cats have been transformed
from a side languishing in the lower reaches of the table to one now
firmly in the race for automatic promotion.
However, the former Republic of Ireland international insists that,
just like Manager of the Month awards, no accolades should be handed
out until the end of the season.
He said: “The time to reflect will be at the end of the season.
It is just like these bloody awards they give out month-to-month. It's
about how you finish at the end of the season.
“I had great belief when I took the job we could turn things
around and we could have a good season. But having said that, we have
achieved nothing yet and I still believe the crunch time is over the
next 11 games - but I have great belief in the players.”
Many of the teams are due to face each other in top-of-the-table clashes
over the remaining fixtures of the season, and this is something that
West Bromwich Albion boss, Tony Mowbray, knows will be vital for the
final outcome of the tightest race for promotion for years.
“We’ve got a huge month coming up. If we (West Brom) come
out of this month in contact and in a position to challenge for those
top two places, I feel as if the last six games of the season are all
winnable.
“We’ll be up against sides who potentially won’t
be sucked into the bottom three or are trying to get into the play-offs.
The challenge for us is to keep pushing on and put a pin in the bubble
of the teams around us.”
Blues boss, Steve Bruce, has described this time of the season as the ‘tickly
bit’ but wants his team to enjoy where they are, acknow-ledging
that the promotion race is a spectacle for those who watch it, but
are not part of it.
“We need to enjoy these times because for so long last season,
there was so much doom-and-gloom around St. Andrews last season so
it’s good to see the results going our way for once, but it’s
going to be a tight finish to the season, for the neutral it is going
to be a hell of a spectacle, it’s going to be a nervous time,
that’s for sure.”
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