The Championship season continued with the latest round of games played over the weekend.
Another Newcastle defeat opened the Brighton but Albion could only draw so closed to within a point of the leaders. Cardiff, Wigan and rock bottom Rotherham make up the bottom three.
Here’s a round up of the Championship action from the other games played.
Results
Thursday 1st December 2016 – Sky Bet Championship
Queens Park Rangers 1-2 Wolverhampton Wanderers 19:45
Friday 2nd December 2016 – Sky Bet Championship
Nottingham Forest 2-1 Newcastle United 19:45
Saturday 3rd December 2016 – Sky Bet Championship
Birmingham City 0-3 Barnsley 15:00
Blackburn Rovers 1-1 Huddersfield Town 15:00
Bristol City 2-0 Ipswich Town 15:00
Burton Albion 2-1 Rotherham United 15:00
Cardiff City 0-0 Brighton & Hove Albion 15:00
Fulham 5-0 Reading 15:00
Norwich City 5-0 Brentford 15:00
Sheffield Wednesday 2-1 Preston North End 15:00
Wigan Athletic 0-1 Derby County 15:00
Leeds United 2-0 Aston Villa 17:30
A Thursday night game saw Wolves and QPR kick-off the Championship action. This allowed Paul Lambert to collect his first win since his appointment as Wolves boss when his side went away from Loftus Road with a 2-1 win.
Friday night football has become common in recent years with this seeing Newcastle suffer defeat once again. Rafa Benitez’s side slipped to back-to-back league defeats for the first time this season after a 2-1 defeat at Nottingham Forest, which saw the home side make it a hat trick of wins moving them up to 13th.
Brighton went into the weekend knowing a win at relegation-threatened Cardiff would take them top. However, Albion had to be content with the one to close the gap at the top to a point. The Bluebirds themselves remain in the bottom three with it now just the one win in five.
With the top two dropping points Reading had a great chance to close the gap on automatic promotion. This didn’t work out as planned though with the Royals thumped 5-0 at Craven Cottage against Fulham, now just three points from a play-off place.
A first defeat in five was suffered by Birmingham following a surprise 3-0 loss at St Andrew’s against Barnsley, who were collecting only a second win in the last 10.
Blackburn‘s point against Huddersfield extended the unbeaten run to three games, it also kept Rovers above the drop zone. The visitors though dropped out on the top six as the winless run they are on was extended to five.
Mick McCarthy had eased pressure on himself but this was straight back on the Ipswich boss after a 2-0 defeat at Ashton Gate. Bristol City‘s win ended a run of three straight defeats.
Burton moved three points clear of the relegation zone after a 2-1 win against Rotherham at the Pirelli Stadium against the rock bottom club, leaving the Millers 13 points from safety and facing almost certain relegation.
A run of five defeats was ended by Norwich in emphatic fashion when they thrashed Brentford 5-0 at Carrow Road to boost the promotion hopes. This was Brentford’s fifth defeat in six though and fourth in a row, seeing them drop to within three points of relegation as a result.
Sheffield Wednesday played a large period of the 2-1 win against Preston with only ten men. In an amazing end to the game at Hillsborough though the visitors were reduced to nine men when two Lilywhites teammates were both shown straight red cards for fighting with each other!
The push towards a play-off place was continued by Derby when they moved to within a couple of points of the top six, whilst ensuring Wigan would remain in the relegation zone after a 1-0 win at the DW Stadium.
Steve Bruce’s unbeaten run as Aston Villa boss was going to end at some point with this happening in the evening kick-off on Saturday against promotion-chasing Leeds, a 2-0 win at Elland Road took the Whites up to fourth.
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