The Championship column March 06 2008
The most consistent feature of the Coca-Cola Championship must surely be its inconsistency. The prize of promotion is huge, the financial windfall that comes with it enormous and life-changing, but with ten games left for most of the contenders, there's not a single team on which you would bet your mortgage.
Bristol City lead the way and are having a season that makes a mockery of the limited expectation of last summer.
However, even they have lost seven times in the Championship and they have accrued the same number of points from 36 games as Premier League leaders Arsenal have from 28. Three points behind Gary Johnson's men are Watford, formidable travellers yet surprisingly meek at Vicarage Road.
Even Preston, struggling to beat the drop, have a better home record than the Hornets.
West Brom and Charlton were always meant to be in the shake-up. Premier League parachute payments give them a head start, but ten defeats apiece suggests underachievement, not a charge that can be levelled at Plymouth. Swapping the voluble Ian Holloway for the lugubrious Paul Sturrock has merely increased their momentum, and the top flight beckons the Pilgrims for the first time.
Given their enormous catchment area, Argyle's arrival among the elite would capture the imagination of the neutral and would unlock the potential always attributed to the deep south-west.
So, with one exception, that deals with the top six. Teams as far down as 11th placed Crystal Palace will rightly fancy their chances, but my attention has been caught by the achievements so far of Stoke City, on who's game against Burnley ITV's cameras and my microphone will be trained this weekend.
Not since the days of Tony Waddington has their been such hope in the Potteries. When they retreated, battered and bruised, from the old Division One back in 1985, they can't have imagined it would have taken this long to be in a position to return.
That they are is down to the enthusiasm and nous of manager Tony Pulis and his staff. It's taken Pulis sixteen years and six league clubs to become an overnight sensation. He was always destined to manage, taking his FA coaching badge as a teenager and adding his UEFA licence by the age of 21.
He has ridden the wheel of fortune - spells at Bournemouth, Gillingham, Bristol City and Portsmouth preceded his first stint with Stoke. Frozen out by the club's then Icelandic owners, Pulis laid the foundations for Plymouth's current upward mobility before happily accepting an invitation to return to the Britannia at the start of last season to work for chairman Peter Coates.
His methods are simple - his critics might say unreconstructed - but they work, and in any argument over footballing style a league table is usually the most convincing contribution. Pulis has also played the loan market supremely well.
Last season the temporary accquisitions of Lee Hendrie, Salif Diao, Patrik Berger and Andy Griffin kept Stoke in play-off contention until the final day.
This time around, Diao and Griffin have signed permanently, Ryan Shawcross was first borrowed then bought from Manchester United, and there's a good chance that the visit of Owen Coyle's Burnley this weekend will see debuts for two more loanees, Wigan goalkeeper Carlo Nash and Middlesbrough defender Chris Riggott.
Yes, Stoke's players are big and strong, but Pulis sees those as qualities not limitations. Physical prowess is not the whole story - offer the flair of Liam Lawrence to any other Championship manager and the answer would be as swift as it would be positive.
The challenge now is to ensure back-to-back away defeats at Preston and QPR are quickly consigned to distant memory. Even in a League as unpredictable as the Championship, inconsistency is an unwelcome visitor once winter turns to spring.
Jon Champion