The Championship’s reputation is as an ultra-competitive league where anyone can beat anyone. One glance at the current table, however, and you will see Leicester, still a Premier League team in all but name, slicing a route back to the top tier at breakneck pace, set to smash through the 100-point barrier as Burnley did last season, with Leeds and Southampton, also relegated from the top flight last year, in their slipstream. Welcome to the new Championship: an era of big budgets and ambitious managerial appointments.
There have been casualties of this epoch in recent years, Cardiff among them. A Premier League club less than five years ago they have been forced to readjust their aims and their finances and pretty much start again. In Erol Bulut they have, perhaps, the second tier’s least heralded head coach, yet in half a season he has steered them to within three points of the playoff places. A win over Leeds at Cardiff City Stadium this Saturday could launch the Bluebirds towards an improbable promotion charge.
