Hannibal Mejbri lit up Friday night's derby for Birmingham City, Neil Critchley still can't get QPR moving and Oli Norwood was superb - again - for Sheffield United. All this and more from the latest round of the Championship...
TEAM OF THE ROUND
Bristol City have had a touch of the unpredictable for a few years now. We're not quite in the 'streaky' Lee Johnson era of batches of promotion form being followed by relegation form, but this season has seen Bristol City have me on the back foot when trying to keep up with their current trend.
This season's ups and downs have gone as follows. After failing to win any of the first three a long hard struggle looked on the cards. A brilliant five game run then had us all thinking the Robins would be a vibrant, young and attacking side challenging for the top six. Then, from the middle of September to Boxing Day, Bristol City were second only to Wigan as the worst side in the Championship. You can see why this gets confusing.
I suspect we can all guess what's coming, Bristol City are back in form again with the current run producing six undefeated games with three wins in the last four. Saturday's victory came via the help of a goalkeeping mistake but they conquered Norwich City, a club with particularly might at Championship level. What happens next then? I'm not going to bother predicting, other than to say it won't be subtle and it won't be boring.
PLAYER OF THE ROUND
Oli Norwood (Sheffield United)
When it comes to this season's Sheffield United promotion tilt, I suspect even manager Paul Heckingbottom would admit that the strategy has been strength in stability and getting the best out of what was already at the club. Being stable has worked a treat, with pretty much all the other big hitters in the Championship changing managers at some point this season. Sheffield United have just kept on going and find themselves ten points clear of third place with a game in hand and just 16 matches left to play.
The Blades registered a tenth game undefeated at the weekend, cruising in 3-0 winners over Swansea. The starting line up only contained two players who weren't already at the club last season, centre back Anel Ahmedhozic and on loan midfielder James McAtee. You can still find the legendary Billy Sharp up front, defensive lynchpin John Egan at the back, and making the United midfield tick is Oli Norwood. Norwood was a standout against Swansea, his five chances created was the most of any player on the pitch and Sheffield United's second goal came when his free kick crashed off the bar and was followed up by Jack Robinson. Defensively his ten recoveries and four interceptions suggest he's more often than not in the right place at the right time.
Norwood is over the 200 game mark for Sheffield United and is somewhat of a Championship promotion guru, having gone up with Brighton, Fulham and the Blades already in his career. It looks pretty unfathomable that he won't add a fourth Championship promotion this season in what is developing into one of the most illustrious second tier runs of any player in recent times.
TALKING POINT OF THE ROUND
Critchley's QPR Can't Get Going!
Even though I'm surprised by very little in the Championship, if you'd told me how Neil Critchley ended up at QPR and how bad his start would be, I'd have struggled to believed you on both counts. Critchley was one of the better managerial performers in the division last season, stabilising his newly promoted Blackpool team and making them immediately competitive at Championship level.
What followed was a scarcely believable revolution of the managerial merry-go-round. Firstly Mick Beale left the Aston Villa assistant managers job to take over at QPR, with Critchley quitting Blackpool to replace Beale at Aston Villa. Within a few short months Beale jumped ship from QPR to take over the Rangers job, Stevie Gerrard was sacked at Villa leaving Critchley unemployed, and so Critchley replaced Beale at QPR. If you followed all of that, more power to you!
Critchley had of course made a big mistake taking the Villa assistants job, but surely back in the Championship was going to be a force once again? Well apparently not so far. Maybe it was the mythical 'new manager bounce' but after winning his first QPR game at Preston, the Rs have not won in nine games in all competitions. If you add the end of Beale's run it's actually one win in 16 games for QPR, with a fairly quiet and fairly frugal January transfer window alongside.
Can Critchley get QPR going? He needs to soon!
LOANEE OF THE ROUND
Hannibal Mejbri (Birmingham City on loan from Manchester United)
In my research for this part of the column I thought I'd quickly watch the YouTube highlights of Birmingham's win over West Brom on Friday night, the title of the video was 'Hannibal STEALS the show!'. Ok, so there's probably a bit of Sky Sports salacious hyperbole in the title, but you'd have to conclude that they are telling the truth.
Hannibal pulled off what is known to regular Championship watchers as 'a Joe Bryan', in reference to the former Fulham full back's audacious goal in the behind closed doors play-off final of 2020. It was the same energy here on Friday night, with the Manchester United loanee signalling to cross his free kick to the back post before fiercely whipping it the other side of the wall to catch out flailing keeper David Button on the front post. Fans are very quick to pile in on goalkeepers in situations like this one, but Button was far more culpable for Birmingham's second goal. Hannibal was at it again with a lovely right footed corner and with Button in no mans land Krystian Bielik was able to rise and head into the unguarded empty net.
I'm always keen not to play into the simplistic football binary and will try to acknowledge that two things can be true and that the truth often resides in the grey area in between the black and white positions. Yes, of course I accept it was not Button's best night in goal, but we're here to laud Hannibal's technical prowess and name him our loanee of the week.
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