In the past month or so, the Championship’s top three teams have played 21 games between them. They have lost none, drawn six, and scored 40 goals. Four of those six draws can be accounted for by games between the sides in question. On 15 March, the gap between second and fourth place was two points – now it is eight. Like middle-distance runners who have kept a steady pace for three-quarters of a race but move up a gear when the end is in sight, Middlesbrough, Burnley and Brighton & Hove Albion are pulling away to leave the rest huffing and trailing in their wake.
Even by the Championship’s standards, the pace of the run-in has been ferocious. Burnley are on a 20-game unbeaten run; Middlesbrough’s past three games have been decided by goals in injury-time; Brighton have scored nine in their past two. Frantic barely covers it. Only two teams can avoid the health-ruining trauma of the playoffs, but all three have played like they deserve automatic promotion.Of the three, Brighton seem to be hurtling down the promotion road with the most controlled pace and direction, despite sitting in third place. Their past two home games have been a 5-0 pounding of Fulham, followed by a 4-0 lashing against Queens Park Rangers, something of a surprise perhaps, since before the end of February they had won only one game by more than a single goal. They have dropped six points from the past available 33, scoring 26 goals and conceding five.
Their performance against QPR was perhaps an illustration of why their promotion chances look particularly good. For much of the first half they hardly looked in the game, their passing was disjointed and their strikers isolated. But then either side of the break they produced two moments of brilliance – an Anthony Knockaert free-kick that looked as if it was taken by a left-footed Dimitri Payet, and a 25-yard Exocet of a half-volley by Jiri Skalak that almost ripped a hole in the net – that ultimately won the game. With only three matches remaining, their general play might not need to be that strong and the potential for pieces of skill such as that will always ensure they have a chance.
“It’s just amazing how things can change,” Brighton’s manager, Chris Hughton, said after the victory over QPR. “For big chunks of the season we’ve not looked like a team that can score a lot of goals, so it is a transformation and thankfully for us, a transformation at a good time. It’s a testament to the players. Once we’ve got into a position of real confidence, they’ve pushed forwards to get more. We haven’t sat back and settled for what we’ve got. It’s them really that have looked for more opportunities to score.”
On Saturday Brighton face already relegated Charlton Athletic, a game which may be just as notable for a big planned protest against the Addicks’ owner, Roland Duchâtelet, a man whose primary talent seems to be to find new and interesting ways to make himself unpopular. On many occasions this season Charlton have not played like a side doomed to League One, and they were a little unlucky to lose to Derby last weekend, but although there has been little Lescottian talk of weights being lifted by their demotion, with their fate known it is possible their fight may be gone and another three points are there for Brighton’s taking.
Not that Hughton thinks that way. “I don’t think it has an impact [on us],” he said. “Bolton were relegated a couple of weeks ago, and they came within a whisker of beating Middlesbrough at home last week, so sometimes it can have an opposite effect.”
Only one Brighton player, the right-back Bruno, made the Professional Footballers’ Association Championship team of the year, but had Knockaert and Skalak been around all season (both signed in January) then they might have snuck in, and the cases of Connor Goldson, Beram Kayal and Tomer Hemed would be strong. Having eye-catching names has not been Brighton’s style though, which perhaps makes their place in the table, just behind teams who could afford to drop seven figures on strikers and ahead of Derby, whose spending ticked past the £25m mark, even more impressive.
The chances are the promotion race will go right down to the final day, when the drama-friendly fixture computer decreed Brighton would travel to Middlesbrough, while Burnley face Charlton. At this stage, even with such a small number of games left, it is virtually impossible to predict which two will go up, and then whether the unlucky third will recover and gather themselves for the playoffs. Of the three, it seems Brighton are playing with the most freedom at the crucial time, dealing with the pressure of a promotion push with the sort of calmness you might expect from a Hughton side.
“It’s certainly more enjoyable than being at the other end of the table,” he said on Tuesday. “I’ve been there, and you’d certainly rather have this pressure.” You would certainly back them to produce a decisive surge in this particular race.
