Championship tips and predictions: Owls to beat the drop at the expense of QPR

George Dempsey
21 March 2024

Planet Sport takes a look at the Championship relegation dogfight and weighs in with our tips for the outright relegation market.

Rotherham’s return of three wins in 38 Championship matches means they’ll soon be condemned to League One football, but there’s no value in that.

It’s a real scrap at the bottom this season with five points separating 23rd-place Sheffield Wednesday (38) and 16th-place Millwall (43).

That said, we’ll start by ruling out relegation for Neil Harris’ side, as well as Plymouth based on their home form, Blackburn who are looking stubborn, and Stoke who are only there on the back of a horrible run of fixtures.

It’s a very Yorkshire-looking dropzone with Danny Rohl’s side joining the Millers and Huddersfield Town in making up the bottom three.

The Owls are the shortest price to make the drop at 5/6 closely followed by the Terriers, but there are some juicy prices if they can avoid the drop.

Birmingham City are in disastrous form yet they’re as big as 2/1 to take the plunge and the prices get bigger, with a struggling QPR side at 5/2.

The biggest factors against this battling bunch are time and the fixture list. Everyone plays everyone twice, but you need favourable opponents at this stage.

QPR face Birmingham on Good Friday while Monday's standout fixture is Stoke vs Huddersfield.

By the time Huddersfield face Millwall and QPR faces Wednesday the following weekend, the Terriers could be in a far worse position.

Breaking down each fixture list leads us to the conclusion that 48 points are probably enough to survive the drop.

Town are on course for 46 points but there are some nasty-looking fixtures for the teams involved and it’ll be decided on the back of crucial six-pointers.

QPR welcome City and the Owls to Loftus Road for crunch clashes but if they slip up in those games, they’ll need to pick up points away to Plymouth, Swansea, Hull or Coventry.

It’s a matter of opinion at this stage but we’ve seen enough to think that Danny Rohl’s side can still beat the drop.

Birmingham could be in deep trouble by the end of Easter weekend and whilst we feel for the fans, it may be what the club deserves after this season's events.

Lastly, Huddersfield have winnable home games towards the end of April but we think they’ll be in a big hole by then.