The race for automatic promotion from the Championship now looks set to be a three-horse race in the final month of the season.
Leeds United, Leicester City, Ipswich Town and Southampton have all been pushing for a place in the top two since August, but the latter’s hopes of doing so now seem all but over.
The Saints were beaten 3-2 in the 97th minute at Ipswich yesterday and with both Leeds and Leicester also winning, they now sit 12 points adrift of the automatic places.
Russell Martin’s side do have a couple of games in hand, one of which is against Leicester, though it is now going to take a serious sway in results for them to claw back that gap.
Just two points separate Ipswich in first and Leicester in third, and with all three sides having some difficult matches in the run-in, there is set to be some twists and turns to come.
MacAnthony predicts who will win promotion from the Championship this season
Peterborough United chairman Darragh MacAnthony, who is currently in a promotion race of his own in League One, has this morning shared his prediction on the three sides he thinks will come up live on talkSPORT.
MacAnthony has given his prediction a couple of times on the race in the Championship and said as far back as two months ago Leeds could actually catch Leicester.
Leicester were, of course, 17 points ahead of Leeds at the turn of the New Year and so it has taken a monumental turn around to get to this stage in the season.
For whoever comes third and misses out on the top two, it is going to take some serious mental strength to comeback and win the play-offs.
MacAnthony has backed both Leeds and Ipswich to win promotion automatically, with Southampton actually pipping Leicester to coming up through the play-offs.
He said: “Leeds to win, Ipswich second. And then I’d like Coventry to gate crash the play offs but I don’t think it’ll happen, so I’ll take Southampton.”
Leeds must continue focusing on their own results
The standard at the top of the Championship this season has been like nothing ever seen before. Three sides look on course to eclipse 100 points.
It would’ve been easy for Leeds to go into yesterday’s match with Hull City a little deflated after the events at Ipswich a matter of minutes earlier, but they simply cannot let that be the case.
The sheer volume of Ipswich’s last minute goals this season would be enough to knock any team fighting up there with them out of their stride.
However, thankfully Leeds look like they are solely focusing on themselves and that has so fair paid off. It is important they do so for the rest of the season.