West Ham, Fulham fight for 14-goal Plymouth record buy; Saints replace Leeds as main threat

This Championship Spotlight column focuses on West Ham and Fulham targeting Plymouth’s best player, while Southampton and Coventry City are given their flowers.

MARTIN RETURNS TO SWANSEA WITH IN-FORM SAINTS

Going back to his days as Swansea City’s head coach, I was sceptical over Russell Martin’s credentials as a manager. While his preferred style of play has always been pleasant on the eye, his sides have often struggled defensively and not been clinical enough in front of goal.

But at the moment, Martin and his Southampton side cannot be denied as they are taking the Championship by storm.

Having been on the outskirts of the fight for automatic promotion at the start of this season, Southampton’s 19-game unbeaten run in the Championship has them – not Leeds United – firmly placed as Ipswich Town’s main rivals for the top two as they are now just three points adrift of Kieran McKenna‘s side.

While Leicester City – who are seven points clear at the top – are showing no sign of slowing down, Ipswich took their foot off the gas before returning to winning ways last weekend against Sunderland.

Ipswich’s dip has left the door ajar for Southampton, who – on the evidence of their unbeaten stretch of results – will be difficult to stop during the run-in.

The quality of Leicester, Southampton and Leeds was always going to make them frontrunners for promotion this season and Ipswich deserve immense credit for separating the three relegated Premier League sides during the first half of the 2023/24 campaign.

McKenna-ball continues to work wonders as Ipswich punch above their weight near the summit of the Championship. Still, at some stage, the immense quality of their rivals may tell and they will be nervously looking over their shoulders with Southampton purring.

After earning an impressive comeback victory against Sunderland, it does not get much easier for Ipswich, who visit The King Power Stadium to face table-toppers Leicester City on Monday night.

Southampton, meanwhile, will travel to face Swansea City in what will be Martin’s first game back at the South Wales club since leaving in the summer. Having won 5-0 in the reverse fixture at St Mary’s in December, Saints will fancy their chances of extending their unbeaten Championship run to 20 games this weekend.

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O’HARE INSPIRES COVENTRY CITY’S RAPID SURGE

Southampton are out on their own as the in-form team in the Championship, but Coventry City are on a superb run of their own.

Nine games without a loss across all competitions is impressive enough but thus stat becomes even more eye-catching when you consider that they have faced Southampton, Leeds United, Sunderland, Middlesbrough and Leicester City during this stretch of fixtures.

Their season hit new heights last weekend as Coventry battled back from behind to beat 10-man M69 rivals Leicester City 3-1 at home. This statement victory lifted Mark Robins’ side into the top six and you’d now have to back them to give themselves a chance of righting the wrong of last season’s play-off final loss to Luton Town at Wembley.

For a while, Coventry looked set to stumble into the bottom half and this would have been half-expected after they cashed in on Viktor Gyokeres and Gustavo Hamer in the summer.

But these two major sales enabled Robins to target a higher quality player in the summer and £7.7m striker Haji Wright – who has 13 goal involvements in 26 Championship appearances – is doing an admirable job of filling the void left by Gyokeres.

Coventry have also been boosted by Callum O’Hare’s return to fitness following a ten-month layoff due to an ACL injury.

Targeted by Burnley before he suffered this serious injury, the talented midfielder has shown since returning why he was once coveted by Vincent Kompany’s side.

His brace in the 3-1 win over Leicester made it six goals in 15 Championship matches for O’Hare and it’s a huge shot in the arm for Coventry’s play-off hopes that the 25-year-old has hit the ground running from the off.

Coventry are by no means the richest club in the Championship, but they are working the system expertly to maximise their profits and O’Hare or Wright are perhaps next in line to follow Gyokeres and Hamer in making the Sky Blues a fortune.

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PLYMOUTH RISK LOSING RECORD SIGNING

Speaking of a Championship club in line to make a significant profit from a player sale, we have Plymouth Argyle, who are at risk of losing prized asset Morgan Whittaker this month.

Plymouth made a huge statement in the summer as they invested over £2m combined to sign Whittaker and Bali Mumba from Swansea City and Norwich City respectively.

For a newly-promoted club with not the biggest budget, this was a bold move but it has worked a treat as both players have been integral with Plymouth sitting comfortably away from the relegation zone for much of this campaign.

Securing survival will have been the sole aim for Plymouth before this season. While they are on track to achieve this goal, their task has been made more difficult in recent weeks as they have lost manager Steven Schumacher and loan pair Finn Azaz and Luke Cundle.

Plymouth will have hoped to keep Whittaker – who has 14 goals and five assists – until the summer at least but Football Insider reckon West Ham, Fulham and Brentford are all ‘racing’ to sign him.

The Pilgrims ‘standing to land a huge profit’ from the sale of Whittaker would soften the blow of him leaving and while a mid-season exit is far from ideal, sales like this are necessary if they are to copy Coventry and stabilise in the Championship once again.

Needing 15-20 points from their remaining 19 games to stay in the Championship, Plymouth would probably have enough about them to stay up without Whittaker, but his exit would likely force them to have a few nervy days before the end of the season.

Further down the table, Danny Rohl is working wonders at Sheffield Wednesday to ensure that the South Yorkshire side have a decent chance of survival when they realistically have no right to given what owner Dejphon Chansiri has put them through this season alone.

If any of the bottom three are to survive, the Owls look the most likely to at the expense of Huddersfield Town (sorry Winty) while the confidence at QPR has waned following the initial new manager bounce provided by Marti Cifuentes.

As for Rotherham United, the word doomed comes to mind. And as F365’s resident Millers supporter, I’d rather not talk about it…