Championship Week 12: Watford on top, Birmingham sack Clark... finally

Just a quick post today with the next round of games coming up tonight.
First up, leaving the stats to one side, this Championship season is starting to have the look of a bit of a corker about it.
No team has managed to pull away at the top of the table and just nine points separate first and seventeenth - that's just three wins.
Yes for a season that's 12 games old that's a decent number of wins, but with another 34 games still to play, that means basically three-quarters of the division are still in with a shout of promotion.

Position	Team	Played	Won	Drawn	Lost	Goals For	Goals Against	Goal Difference	Points
1	Watford	12	7	3	2	23	12	11	24
2	Derby	12	6	5	1	22	10	12	23
3	Middlesbrough	12	7	2	3	18	9	9	23
4	Norwich	12	6	3	3	21	11	10	21
5	Nott'm Forest	12	5	6	1	20	11	9	21
6	Ipswich	12	5	5	2	17	11	6	20
7	Wolves	12	5	5	2	17	14	3	20
8	Charlton	12	4	7	1	14	11	3	19
9	Bournemouth	12	5	3	4	17	14	3	18
10	Brentford	12	5	3	4	15	16	-1	18
11	Sheffield Weds	12	4	5	3	11	11	0	17
12	Cardiff	12	4	4	4	15	15	0	16
13	Blackburn	12	4	4	4	17	19	-2	16
14	Leeds	12	4	3	5	12	15	-3	15
15	Rotherham	12	4	3	5	11	14	-3	15
16	Reading	12	4	3	5	15	20	-5	15
17	Huddersfield	12	4	3	5	16	22	-6	15
18	Millwall	12	3	4	5	13	16	-3	13
19	Wigan	12	2	5	5	12	14	-2	11
20	Brighton	12	2	5	5	11	14	-3	11
21	Birmingham	12	2	5	5	12	19	-7	11
22	Fulham	12	3	1	8	13	22	-9	10
23	Bolton	12	2	2	8	9	21	-12	8
24	Blackpool	12	1	3	8	8	18	-10	6

Sure that's probably a pretty fanciful suggestion for many clubs, but all it takes is a run of pretty good luck over ten games or so and a team can shoot up the table. From there, anything, as they say, is posisble.
We've seen in the NHL (primary submission the Toronto Maple Leafs) that a 48 game season can still mean outlying teams achieve positive results thanks to PDO.
Even a 60-ish game season still leaves room for luck to factor in - it wasn't until around the 65 game mark last season (the NHL plays 82 games) that the wheels finally fell off for the Leafs and their poor possession numbers kicked-in.

So Watford and Derby's simultaneous 3-0 away wins, coupled with Norwich and Nottingham Forest's one-goal away defeats rearranges the top of the table significantly - as did Middlesbrough's 2-1 win down at Brighton (poor Brighton).
I've been bigging up Middlesbrough for a while now and I'm quite pleased to see them coming through. Anyone dominating games the way they are deserves to be rewarded (again, poor Brighton).
And at the other end, Birmingham's 1-0 home defeat by fellow strugglers Bolton finally sealed Lee Clark's fate.

Position	Team	Shots for total	Shots against total	Corsi/TSR
1	Watford	165	193	0.461
2	Derby	168	156	0.519
3	Middlesbrough	195	111	0.637
4	Norwich	220	128	0.632
5	Nott'm Forest	158	147	0.518
6	Ipswich	165	177	0.482
7	Wolves	175	147	0.543
8	Charlton	107	181	0.372
9	Bournemouth	174	151	0.535
10	Brentford	153	171	0.472
11	Sheffield Weds	164	139	0.541
12	Cardiff	137	188	0.422
13	Blackburn	186	170	0.522
14	Leeds	120	195	0.381
15	Rotherham	177	174	0.504
16	Reading	145	162	0.472
17	Huddersfield	177	171	0.509
18	Millwall	174	145	0.546
19	Wigan	143	139	0.507
20	Brighton	203	124	0.621
21	Birmingham	160	186	0.462
22	Fulham	151	149	0.503
23	Bolton	146	205	0.416
24	Blackpool	133	187	0.416

As we can see from the shot share table (Corsi/TSR) Birmingham's rate is pretty poor - seventh worst at 46.2% of all shots taken per game - although it is actually on a par with Watford (46.1%).
However the real problem comes when you look at shots on target share - something which is arguyably a greater measure of player and team skill. Here Birmingham really struggle, getting just 41.7% of shots on target - fifth worst in the league.

Add in that this Corsi/TSR score is basically the same as last year (45%) and you can see why the Blues owners had enough. As ever though - the sacking was really prompted by a dip in PDO. All was well in the early season when Birmingham had a PDO 106 four weeks in.
That dipped and rebounded a little, but now having dipped again Clark suffered.
It's clear the situation behind the scenes is not great at Birmingham - whether a new manager will be able to get anymore out of what seems to be a squad low in skill will have to be seen.

Position	Team	shots on target for total	shots on target against total	Shots on target share
1	Watford	58	55	0.513
2	Derby	60	56	0.517
3	Middlesbrough	54	30	0.643
4	Norwich	64	44	0.592
5	Nott'm Forest	49	48	0.505
6	Ipswich	56	50	0.528
7	Wolves	51	44	0.537
8	Charlton	37	49	0.43
9	Bournemouth	61	47	0.565
10	Brentford	58	57	0.504
11	Sheffield Weds	43	41	0.512
12	Cardiff	44	45	0.494
13	Blackburn	64	59	0.52
14	Leeds	35	62	0.361
15	Rotherham	56	50	0.528
16	Reading	44	50	0.468
17	Huddersfield	63	57	0.525
18	Millwall	54	44	0.551
19	Wigan	33	52	0.388
20	Brighton	53	33	0.616
21	Birmingham	43	60	0.417
22	Fulham	49	50	0.495
23	Bolton	44	72	0.379
24	Blackpool	38	56	0.404

Speaking of PDO (luck), Derby and Watford are now first and third in that measure respectively.
Watford's shot share score is deceiving - the team played large portions of two games (almost a tenth of the season so far, I'd guess) with only ten men on the pitch, and have also been victimised by score effects considerably - see the Sheffield Wednesday victory last weekend.
More realistic is probably the Hornets shots on target share of 51.3%. Again that's not great, but anything above parity is always a welcome place to be.

Position	Team	Shooting % For	Save %	PDO
1	Watford	39.66	78.18	117.84
2	Derby	36.67	82.14	118.82
3	Middlesbrough	33.34	70	103.34
4	Norwich	32.82	75.01	107.83
5	Nott'm Forest	40.81	77.08	117.89
6	Ipswich	30.36	78	108.36
7	Wolves	33.34	68.18	101.52
8	Charlton	37.82	77.54	115.37
9	Bournemouth	27.87	70.21	98.08
10	Brentford	25.86	71.93	97.79
11	Sheffield Weds	25.57	73.17	98.74
12	Cardiff	34.08	66.68	100.76
13	Blackburn	26.56	67.81	94.37
14	Leeds	34.28	75.8	110.08
15	Rotherham	19.64	72	91.65
16	Reading	34.11	59.99	94.1
17	Huddersfield	25.4	61.4	86.8
18	Millwall	24.08	63.62	87.7
19	Wigan	36.35	73.07	109.42
20	Brighton	20.75	57.56	78.31
21	Birmingham	27.91	68.34	96.24
22	Fulham	26.54	56.02	82.55
23	Bolton	20.45	70.83	91.27
24	Blackpool	21.06	67.85	88.91

Tonight's games include a couple of crackers - at least on paper.
Watford v Forest and Wolves v Middlesbrough should be very good attacking games. Well worth watching if you're not being distracted by the Champions League.

Position	Team	Corsi/TSR	Shots on target share	PDO
1	Watford	0.461	0.513	117.84
2	Derby	0.519	0.517	118.82
3	Middlesbrough	0.637	0.643	103.34
4	Norwich	0.632	0.592	107.83
5	Nott'm Forest	0.518	0.505	117.89
6	Ipswich	0.482	0.528	108.36
7	Wolves	0.543	0.537	101.52
8	Charlton	0.372	0.43	115.37
9	Bournemouth	0.535	0.565	98.08
10	Brentford	0.472	0.504	97.79
11	Sheffield Weds	0.541	0.512	98.74
12	Cardiff	0.422	0.494	100.76
13	Blackburn	0.522	0.52	94.37
14	Leeds	0.381	0.361	110.08
15	Rotherham	0.504	0.528	91.65
16	Reading	0.472	0.468	94.1
17	Huddersfield	0.509	0.525	86.8
18	Millwall	0.546	0.551	87.7
19	Wigan	0.507	0.388	109.42
20	Brighton	0.621	0.616	78.31
21	Birmingham	0.462	0.417	96.24
22	Fulham	0.503	0.495	82.55
23	Bolton	0.416	0.379	91.27
24	Blackpool	0.416	0.404	88.91

Exciting news

Well, I think it is.
I've stumbled across a new data source so this blog is hopefully going to be getting better... well bigger, and of course bigger is *always* better.
More next time when I have time to address it.