Championship round-up: Stolbakken - my 'bad' side is in big trouble
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Your support makes all the difference.The Wolverhampton manager, Stale Solbakken, admitted his side are now mired in trouble after losing 3-1 at Crystal Palace. An Andre Moritz double and Yannick Bolasie's strike condemned the away side to their fifth defeat in a row, leaving them in 18th place.
"We're in deep s*** at the moment," Solbakken said. "It's my duty to find out why and I won't blame anyone. We have to dig very deep and don't give any excuses – we are a bad Championship team."
Much has been made of Leicester City's acquisition of Chris Wood for a reported £1.5m fee from West Bromwich over the past week. He looks a valuable signing after scoring twice on his Foxes debut in a 6-1 win over Huddersfield Town.
"It was not a bad way to start the New Year, was it?" said his manager, Nigel Pearson. "It was a very good team performance. We have had a tough run of late when our performances have not always got the points we deserved. But when you look at the Christmas and new year period taken together, the only game we have lost we should have won."
Ritchie De Laet, Anthony Knockaert (2) and Martyn Waghorn also scored, leaving Pearson's side five points off second place.
Steve Bruce described the Bloomfield Road pitch as "an absolute quagmire" after his promotion-chasing Hull side were held to a goalless draw by Blackpool. "People play good money to watch good football and Blackpool try to play an attractive game but the pitch is so slow and horrible, it's a mess," he said.
After the Premier League delivered 41 goals at the weekend, the Championship ran it close with 38, most notably from Charlton Athletic's 4-3 win at play-off hopefuls Watford, when the visiting captain Johnnie Jackson scored the late winning goal.
Derby County also dented the promotion aspirations of high-flying Middlesbrough with a 3-1 success, while managerless Blackburn Rovers inflicted defeat on Alex McLeish in his first match in charge of Nottingham Forest, taking a comfortable 3-0 victory at Ewood Park.
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