We create our own rules. We establish patterns and follow them, deliberately or otherwise. I have established certain patterns on this Blog. I usually publish “Word of the week” pieces on a Monday. When writing about football, with screenshots showing league positions, I have only ever posted one such image per month. This piece will break that pattern. Here, for the second time this month, is a screenshot showing the teams at the top of the Championship, the second tier in English football.

As usual, the image has been captured from the BBC website. It shows Leeds United, the team that I have followed since childhood, in second place, as they were in this piece from 1 April. At the start of the month Ipswich were top, with 84 points from 39 games and Leeds had 83 points, also after 39 games.

As you can see, Leicester City and Ipswich have swapped places. Leicester secured promotion back to the Premier League on Friday night, when Leeds were hammered 4-0 at QPR. That result left Leeds a point ahead of Ipswich but having played two games more. Ipswich drew the first of their games in hand on Saturday night (3-3 at Hull City) and play the second of them tomorrow night (Tuesday 30 April) at Coventry.

Whatever happens tomorrow, Leeds will still be in with a chance of automatic promotion when the final round of games kicks off on Saturday (4 May) at 12.30pm. Even if Ipswich win tomorrow night, Leeds will be 3 points behind with a game to play, and (almost certainly) a superior goal difference. Naturally I am hoping that Coventry will do us a favour and win tomorrow night. It’s the least they can do. They beat Leeds 2-1 on 6 April, the club’s first league defeat of 2024.

The current form of both Leeds and Ipswich is more like that of teams in the bottom three of the league: 7 points from 6 games and 6 points from 5 games respectively. Both have 90 points and are still averaging at least 2 points per game. There has only been one previous season in the Championship where a team with 90 points has not been promoted: 1998, when Sunderland lost the play-off final to Charlton on penalties.

By this time next week either Leeds or Ipswich will be preparing for this season’s play-offs. I know, without having to check back through the club’s history, that Leeds have never been promoted via that route. This unfortunate history goes right back to the season when play-offs were introduced (1986-87): Charlton denied Leeds a place in the top tier then, 11 years before they did the same to Sunderland. Most recently, in 2019, Leeds fell to Derby, not even making it to the play-off final.

I began this piece with the idea of rules and patterns, and have broken one of mine in these 500 words. If Leeds do end up in the play-offs over the next few days, there’s a pattern stretching back 37 years that needs to be broken.