It was league game number two for most of the EFL this week and the relentless nature of football at tiers two, three and four of the English game is already in full swing.
Only nine of the 72 clubs across the EFL’s three divisions still have their 100 per cent league records — we must repeat: only two games have been played — while 14 are yet to get off the mark.
Wigan Athletic, who started their season in League One on minus-eight points after a punishment over financial issues, are now only two below zero. There were the usual great goals, big tackles and moaning managers —but there’s plenty that may have escaped your attention, too.
Here’s what you may have missed from the EFL this weekend…
Tom Brady’s Birmingham beers
Birmingham City continued their positive start to the Championship season with a 1-0 win at home to Leeds United. Lukas Jutkiewicz scored a 91st-minute winner for the hosts and among the 30,000 at St Andrew’s celebrating the goal was NFL star Tom Brady. The seven-time Super Bowl winner with the New England Patriots and Tampa Bay Buccaneers recently invested in the Midlands club and was in attendance alongside their new owner Tom Wagner.
Brady’s second-city soiree was anything but passive too. The health-conscious former quarterback is more used to avocado ice cream than pints but, before the game, he made an appearance in The Roost, a pub near the stadium, to mingle with fans, who greeted him with chants of “USA, USA”.
Nothing to see here. Just Tom Brady in a pub in Birmingham. 🏈🍺
Love seeing him connect with the locals after confirming his co-ownership in the club. 🤩🔵 pic.twitter.com/xejhoIWaVA
— Football Tweet ⚽ (@Football__Tweet) August 12, 2023
“I haven’t been to a pub in a very, very long time,” said Brady, 46, who retired in February this year after playing 23 seasons in the NFL. “As an athlete, I tried to take care of myself as best as I could. If I was spending a lot of nights in the pub, then I wouldn’t have been a great player. To have that experience today was very memorable.”
He then swapped the draughts for the St Andrew’s dressing room, popping in to see the Birmingham squad before they took to the pitch against Leeds, themselves now owned by the investment arm of Brady’s hometown NFL team, the San Francisco 49ers.
“The new owners came into the dressing room just as I was coming out, and it was great to see Tom Brady in there as well,” Birmingham manager John Eustace said.
“Tom spoke to the group before our meeting today, so that was great to have one of the most famous sporting people in the world come down and chat to the group. They were all very excited to see him and he gave us some really good words of advice.
“A lot of them are (NFL) fans; the players love it. I know a few of them went to the (NFL) games when they were at Wembley and Tottenham last season.”
Plymouth’s journey from hell
Plymouth Argyle’s journey to Watford for their first away game of the Championship season was far from ideal.
They opted to go by rail, rather than coach (or plane), with the travelling party booked on a service that left Plymouth at around 11am on Friday. But an earlier cancellation on the route made for a less than comfortable journey.
“We planned to get the train because, in the summer holidays, getting out of Devon (by road) is just a disaster,” explained manager Steven Schumacher. “But, as we know at the moment in this country, the trains are horrific. Everybody jumped on (our) train, it was already overbooked and (in that scenario) you’re not allowed reservations,” said the 39-year-old who, along with his squad, had initially booked out the service’s first-class carriages. “Our players had to sit on the floor or stand up for three and half hours to Reading.”
From there, the team got a coach the rest of the way to their hotel for the night.
A hard earned point on the road 🛣️
🎥 Catch the best bits from our 0-0 draw away to Watford ⬇️#pafc pic.twitter.com/aXorH7vRhI
— Plymouth Argyle FC (@Argyle) August 12, 2023
Argyle were able to put the travel difficulties behind them, and ground out a 0-0 draw at Vicarage Road, continuing the promoted side’s unbeaten start to the season.
“The lads could have used that as an excuse, but that’s the beauty of the group: they’re brilliant professionals who just get on with it,” Schumacher said. “But that’s being a Plymouth Argyle player. That’s kind of what you’d have to deal with. If we could afford to fly every single (away) game, we would do that, but we can’t afford to do that.”
It wasn’t a shock to find out Plymouth travelled by coach on their return home on Saturday evening.
Record-breaking booking at St Mary’s
Southampton versus Norwich City on Saturday can definitely be placed in the ‘humdinger’ category; the 4-4 thriller was very much an advert for expert finishing and abject defending. The tone of the game was set by the visitors’ Kenny McLean getting booked by referee Darren England after only 15 seconds for a late tackle on Will Smallbone.
Gone are the days of early misdemeanours being overlooked by match officials. With the new regulations, the men in the middle will be stricter than ever — and McLean’s foul on Smallbone is the earliest yellow card received by a player since Opta started collating data at Championship-level in the 2013-14 season.
Just Stop Oli…
This summer, the British environmental activist group Just Stop Oil has demonstrated on multiple occasions its ability to break into sporting events. So when a big orange banner was unfurled near The Hawthorns on Saturday, fans of both West Bromwich Albion and Swansea City must have feared further disruption, especially when they saw the words “Just Stop O…”
It was, though, a clever ode to Swansea attacking midfielder Ollie Cooper: “Just Stop Oli.” The exciting Wales international is popular among the fanbase and started this Championship season on the back of an excellent breakout campaign in 2022-23, in which he scored six times in 44 games.
Swansea fans have a great flag for Oli Cooper 🤣👏 pic.twitter.com/8hndmFQpde
— The Second Tier (@secondtierpod) August 12, 2023
McManaman Wigan’s main man again
Not many would say the “best moment of my career” career would come against Northampton Town, especially when you’ve been man of the match in an FA Cup final. But the career trajectory for Callum McManaman hasn’t hit the heights that may have been expected after he gave Gael Clichy the runaround as Wigan Athletic shocked Manchester City at Wembley in 2013.
Spells at West Brom, Sheffield Wednesday, Sunderland, Luton Town, Melbourne Victory and Tranmere Rovers (the last three after a second stint at Wigan) followed, but the Liverpudlian failed to establish himself at any of those sides.
Now 32 years old and back at Wigan again under manager Shaun Maloney, a fellow member of the club’s FA Cup-winning starting XI a decade ago, he scored a 79th-minute winner against Northampton on Saturday — a pearler of an effort that curled into the top corner.
There’s not been much to shout about at Wigan in recent years and, even after two wins from two, they remain bottom of the third-tier table on minus two points.
But tales such as McManaman’s could help to build an element of positivity around the Greater Manchester club for the season ahead.
No, Tchamadeu wasn’t told-off for wiping the ball with his shirt…
Colchester United finally got their season underway on Saturday after last weekend’s League Two opener against Swindon Town was postponed because of a rain-soaked, waterlogged pitch… in August. They started well away to Bradford City and took the lead early on through Joe Taylor. They had something to protect and, facing opponents tipped for promotion this season, they naturally started to slow the game down.
But there was a bizarre moment when their defender Junior Tchamadeu went to take a throw-in. New laws this season prohibit the use of towels to dry a football so, to get a better grip, Tchamadeu used his shirt to wipe it. But, to everyone’s bemusement, he then got a talking-to from referee Marc Edwards. Said talking-to, according to the match-officials’ governing body PGMOL, was to warn Tchamadeu about timewasting — something the game’s authorities are really scrutinising this season (see all those hefty chunks of added times, et cetera).
The tactic proved to be ineffective, though, as Bradford came back to win, 2-1.
A harsh red card?
Forward Fred Onyedinma received his marching orders in Rotherham United’s 2-2 Championship draw at home to Blackburn Rovers in a controversial fashion.
His fateful second yellow, for waving an imaginary card after being fouled, is perhaps fair as that is something which is being clamped down this season.
Saturday’s referee Bobby Madeley had coincidentally been part of the PGMOL team which delivered Rotherham’s club visit a couple of weeks before the season started to explain the new rules and regulations. So when he saw this act of dissent — having only spoken to these very players about such situations — he wasn’t in a forgiving mood.
The first caution, though, is certainly up for interpretation.
When Onyedinma put Rotherham 2-0 up, he ran slowly, almost ceremoniously, to the crowd, before hugging a supporter. The IFAB laws of the game — law 12.3, to be exact — state a player leaving the field of play isn’t a bookable offence but that a player doing so should return to the pitch as quickly as possible. Yet the former Millwall forward received a yellow card, much to his and everyone else’s bemusement. He was then booked again, only a minute later, and so he was off.
It’s safe to say Rotherham manager Matt Taylor and the rest of his staff weren’t best pleased, and as frustration grew throughout the game, some of his coaches also received yellow cards.
“Football is going in a strange direction,” Taylor said afterwards. “I know they are trying to make it a better product, but I’m not sure it’s a better product at the moment. I think it’s gone the other way.“
His mood wouldn’t have been helped by the fact Blackburn scored two late goals against his 10 men to take a point.
(Photo of Tom Brady: Gustavo Pantano/MI News/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
