• Home
  • Other Sports
  • Five talking points from the EFL weekend, including Mowbray silencing his doubters at Boro

Five talking points from the EFL weekend, including Mowbray silencing his doubters at Boro

EFL pundit Gab Sutton comes in from the cold to have his say on the weekend’s EFL action

The popular feeling among Blackburn fans was that Tony Mowbray had taken them as far as he can, but the results tell a different story.
However, after a 1-0 win at Stoke last time out, Rovers are up to fourth in the Championship. That's despite having lost the 28-goal Adam Armstrong to Southampton in the summer and reinvested only £400,000 £15million they received for him.
Many expected the Lancashire outfit to be struggling towards the bottom of the table, so to even be contemplating a play-off place, let alone automatic promotion, underlines just what a fine job Mowbray is doing at Ewood Park.

Burton bouncing

We all felt Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink's discomfort as he sat between a bickering Roy Keane and Jamie Carragher in the Sky Sports studio at the weekend. However, there has been nothing painful about the Dutchman's last two games in charge of Burton Albion.

The Brewers cruised to a 4-0 victory over Accrington Stanley on Tuesday night before doing similar damage to relegation-threatened Doncaster on Saturday.
Sheffield United loanee Daniel Jebbison did not catch fire straight away but, with four goals in his last four games, the teenager has timed his hot streak at the perfect time to catch the eye of new Blades boss Paul Heckingbottom. Could a January recall to the Lane be on the cards?

Pompey back in the promotion mix?

Portsmouth secured a fourth consecutive League One victory on Saturday, securing a 1-0 win at Gillingham courtesy of a 93rd-minute own goal.
The result lifted Pompey just two points off the play-offs and firmly in the mix for promotion in what is a wide-open race.
On a modest budget, Danny Cowley has got his recruitment right: gambles on goalkeeper Gavin Bazunu and striker George Hirst have been vindicated.
December's league hostings of Sheffield Wednesday and Oxford, who are in similar positions, could play a crucial role in the play-off scramble.

Dyche at Northampton

No, not Sean Dyche - he won't be dropping three divisions to manage the Cobblers - but son Max Dyche who is proving a chip off the old block.

The 18-year-old had featured briefly in League One last season, prior to a loan spell in the National League North with Kettering, but on Saturday he got his first ever EFL start for Northampton.
Dyche played a part in keeping Orient quiet in a scrappy game, which Jon Brady's side won 1-0 to climb to second.

Port Vale back in business

It has been a difficult period for the Valiants, who had stuttered slightly in their promotion push with back-to-back defeats.
Darrell Clarke was concerned about the performance in the 1-0 defeat to rivals Walsall, so a positive response was essential.
The Burslem outfit will have been relieved, therefore, to keep themselves within a point of the automatic promotion places with a 2-0 victory over Hartlepool, in which they limited their opponents to just one shot on target.
Man-of-the-match for Vale was box-to-box midfielder Ben Garrity, who opened the scoring with a scuffed finish, before Tom Pett wrapped it up in injury-time with a fine solo goal.

READ MORE: Bookies have their say on Ralf Rangnick's chances of succeeding at Manchester United

More Articles