Inclement weather put paid to five EFL matches this weekend but even in places where the games took place as scheduled, storms hit two managers.
Alex Neil of Stoke City and Burton Albion’s Dino Maamria became the latest bosses to lose their jobs after some gloomy spells at their respective clubs.
The skies appear brighter for the Championship’s top three — all of whom won convincingly without conceding. League One’s top two, Portsmouth and Bolton Wanderers, meet tonight (Monday), while in League Two, leaders Stockport — who not so long ago had been on a 13-game winning streak — are now winless in five after being held at Morecambe.
In this week’s column, we will look at Queens Park Rangers, Tranmere Rovers and Derby County, who are finally enjoying sunny spells — and why — and the third-tier player who is keeping up with the elites of English football.
Willock emblematic of Cifuentes’ rejuvenated QPR
The calendar year of 2023 has largely been one to forget for Queens Park Rangers.
Hopes were high early on with Gareth Ainsworth managing the Championship club but things never really took off for him. Play became stale and somewhat turgid at times — and it cost him his job in late October.
There has been an injection of life into their corner of west London in recent times, though, and that is largely due to new manager Marti Cifuentes. The Spaniard has so far performed the required surgery on his QPR side and is now getting their season up and running.
Advertisement
Wins against Stoke and Preston North End in the two games before this weekend provided the right doses of positivity but Saturday’s victory against Hull City could be a real turning point in their season.
A big reason for that is the names on the scoresheet.
Chris Willock was largely on the periphery during Ainsworth’s spell but has had a more integral role under Cifuentes, and he opened the scoring with a superb curling effort which sailed into the top corner. It was his third goal in as many games and symptomatic of a player who has regained his confidence.
Chris Willock that is a beauty 😍
The Martí Cifuentes revolution is well underway at @QPR! 🇪🇸
Don't miss @EFL highlights on ITV4 at 9pm tonight pic.twitter.com/mai6ZqRqRq
— ITV Football (@itvfootball) December 9, 2023
Ilias Chair — another whose form has improved since Cifuentes’ arrival — got the second to seal the win.
“He (Willock) showed the quality he has,” Cifuentes said. “But I’m not surprised; I said from day one that Chris and Ilias will be very important for us. I’m pleased about Chris recovering a smile because I felt he was a bit low on confidence.
“Now he is playing at a level where it’s not easy to take the ball from him and he’s also working hard when we don’t have the ball. He’s starting to be decisive for us in the last third and I think he is a player that, with his quality and potential, he can score more than he has done earlier in his career.”
QPR have taken 11 points from Cifuentes’ six matches in charge, having won earned in 14 under Ainsworth. They have achieved three successive wins for the first time since October 2022, when Michael Beale was the manager, and this trio of victories are more than they achieved in the previous 17 league games of the season combined. It is also the first time they have achieved back-to-back home wins in more than a year.
They remain in the relegation zone but are now only two points from safety.
Adkins dragging Tranmere out of danger
Another recently hired manager who has had a galvanising impact is Nigel Adkins. The former Southampton and Reading boss took over from Ian Dawes at Tranmere early last month with the Merseyside club second-bottom of League Two and on a run of five defeats in all competitions.
They lost against in Atkins’ first game — a 100th-minute winner that saw them beaten 4-3 away to League One promotion chasers Stevenage in the FA Cup — but since then they are unbeaten in five league matches, a run which includes three wins. Their latest victory, against Newport County on Saturday, was perhaps the sweetest of the lot, coming from behind to take the points courtesy of Connor Jennings’ strike two minutes from time.
🤩 One minute and ten seconds of pure joy… your winning goal#SWA pic.twitter.com/7yrS2p7cAb
— Tranmere Rovers FC (@TranmereRovers) December 9, 2023
“It was a special day today, and I think it was more than a win, really — we’ve got a real momentum going now,” says Adkins, who led Southampton into the Premier League in 2012 only to be replaced the following January by Mauricio Pochettino. “We’ve got a belief at the club now and at half-time we knew we could still win the game, whereas before that might not have been the mindset.”
After taking 11 points from the last 15 available in the league, Tranmere are now 21st, six points clear of the relegation places.
Stoke and Burton get rid of the men in the hot seat
Staying with the managerial theme, it was the end of the road for two bosses at clubs 30 miles apart in the English Midlands.
Alex Neil was relieved of his position at Stoke on Sunday afternoon, ending his 16 months in charge. The last straw for the Stoke board was the previous day’s home defeat by the Championship’s second-bottom side Sheffield Wednesday — a fourth loss in a row, in which his team had conceded 10 goals, and their sixth game without a win.
Advertisement
“When people describe it as a lonely place being a manager, that game probably epitomised it,” Neil said after the match. He leaves Stoke in 20th place, two points above the drop zone, and looking for their fifth manager in as many years.
Just up the A50 almost 24 hours before, Burton of League One sacked Dino Maamria. That too followed a defeat — to one of his former clubs, Stevenage — which was also their sixth league game without a win, losing five of them.
Ill-discipline costs Orient against Derby… and a bad short corner
Elsewhere in League One, Leyton Orient were well beaten by promotion-chasing Derby on an afternoon summed up by two moments of lost discipline.
Derby were a goal up courtesy of a well-taken Louie Sibley goal when Orient defender Brandon Cooper got himself inexplicably sent off for an off-the-ball elbow on James Collins. It made a tough task even harder for Richie Wellens’ east Londoners — a team on a run of seven without a win in the league.
Nathaniel Mendez-Laing doubled the visitors’ lead before Orient had their second brain freeze of the day.
Chasing the game, they had sent everyone up for a corner.
Bizarrely, and much to the frustration of those players in the Derby box, Orient opted to play it short. There was nowhere near enough weight on the pass from Tom James, though, and it was easily intercepted. With so many outfield players in the penalty area, all that separated Mendez-Laing and Tom Barkhuizen from Orient goalkeeper Sol Brynn was 70 yards of green grass, and the latter slotted the ball into an empty net after the former had drawn Brynn.
It sealed a fifth straight league victory for fifth-placed Derby, the second time they have achieved such a feat in 2023 after rattling off their first five matches of the year as part of a six-game winning streak.
Sam Hoskins: goal machine
Northampton Town secured their fourth win in five League One games on Saturday with a routine home victory against a poor Fleetwood side.
Central to their good form is Sam Hoskins. The 30-year-old midfielder was on the scoresheet in the 3-0 win, converting a penalty in the first half to double the lead and take his goal tally to 12 for the season.
Advertisement
Hoskins has been at Northampton since 2015 and is approaching a century of goals for the club in more than 350 appearances. But his recent displays have put him in some elite company: he has scored 34 league goals in 61 appearances since the beginning of 2022-23. Only Manchester City’s Erling Haaland (50) and Andy Cook of League Two’s Bradford City (35) have scored more in the top four tiers of the English game during that period.
(Top photo: Warren Little/Getty Images)