The Sky Bet Championship comes back from the international break on Good Friday when all but two of the sides are in action on a day which could be make or break for so many teams now we have the finish line of the season in sight.
Of the 11 matches that are taking place on Friday, two of them are live on TV for us to enjoy in the UK and the other nine can be seen via the streaming service that the clubs offer or there are the social media feeds and things.
Friday’s fixtures are as follows: (3pm unless stated; UK TV in brackets)
AFC Bournemouth v Middlesbrough
Bristol City v Stoke City
Cardiff City v Nottingham Forest
Derby County v Luton Town
Millwall v Rotherham United
Preston North End v Norwich City
Queens Park Rangers v Coventry City
Watford v Sheffield Wednesday
Wycombe Wanderers v Blackburn Rovers
Barnsley v Reading (17.30 – Sky Main Event & Sky Football)
Birmingham City v Swansea City (20.00 – Sky Main Event & Sky Football)
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Big Matches
The race for promotion is in the spotlight of the two televised matches on Friday with the first of them being all about top six consolidation when form horses Barnsley host a Reading side who are still well in the hunt. When they are done it will be the turn of Swansea City to prove their promotion challenge is still on track. They take on a Birmingham City outfit who need the points themselves as they bid to beat the drop. The other big matches on the card see the leaders Norwich City heading to Preston North End while Watford will look to strengthen their promotion push when they host a disappointing Sheffield Wednesday side.
Best of the Rest
AFC Bournemouth manager Jonathan Woodgate hosts his former side Middlesbrough in a match that both will be expecting and needing to win while at the bottom of the table Wycombe Wanderers are pretty much in must win territory when they host Blackburn Rovers. Cardiff City are still in the race for the play-off places and need a win over Nottingham Forest to keep it that way while Rotherham United will be looking to come out of the bottom three when they make the trip to the capital to take on Millwall.
Betting
I’m only going with the one bet on Friday because this is a seriously trappy set of matches to get involved in given that a lot of players in the division were playing international football less than 48hrs before the majority of these games kick off. Number of those players were overseas and would need to return negative Covid tests before they can play so while managers will be hoping they have as many players as possible there will inevitably be unavailable players that we just can’t possibly know about.
That means I’ll go with just the one bet which comes at Adams Park where I expect Blackburn Rovers to get the better of Wycombe Wanderers. If you look at the bare form of Blackburn you’ll see one win in their last 12 but actually when you delve a little deeper in recent times they have held the leaders Norwich to a draw and promotion chasing Swansea while they only went down 1-0 to Brentford in a match they deserved something from but just couldn’t put the ball in the back of the net. Adam Armstrong returning here will help with that and it might be that one is enough here. Wycombe themselves aren’t pulling up trees. They only had one win in their last seven and that was against a terrible Preston North End side who’d packed in playing for Alex Neil by then. The winning goal in that game was one of just two Wycombe have scored in those seven games so they are going down with a whimper. Blackburn can speed up the process here.
Tips
Back Blackburn Rovers to beat Wycombe Wanderers for a 3/10 stake at 1.91 with Betway
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