Eight teams, and scarcely 10 points between them for months. While the Premiership title has long been an unchallenging two-horse race between Manchester United and Chelsea, the top of English league football’s second tier, the Championship, remains thrillingly, feverishly congested. The frantic, concertina’d eightsome are (alphabetically is safer, so regularly do the leaders change) Birmingham City, Derby County, Cardiff City, Preston North End, Southampton, Sunderland, West Bromwich Albion and Wolverhampton Wanderers. One or two others jostle close behind, eager to join a late convulsion for the line. Just three promotion places: automatic for the leading two; the next four play-off to be the one to join them.
Wolves at Sunderland on Saturday, for instance, play a match fraught with significance. The extended drama looks certain to run to the very last kick on 6 May when Preston play host to Birmingham on the same day the others ring down the curtain against supposedly lesser opposition.
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