Birmingham City wrote themselves into soccer history over the past five days. Having beaten Stevenage 1-0 last Thursday the Blues proceeded to add two more clean sheets, shellacking Mansfield Town 4-0 on Saturday and easily handling Blackpool 2-0 on Wednesday.
With the wins City now holds the EFL points record with a hefty 108, beating Reading’s 106 from 2006. Even before hitting 108 points the team’s 105 points was already a League One record and manager Chris Davies said at that point that he didn’t think the record would ever be beaten. Well, that took all of 4 days. And tomorrow they can take the record to 111 points, which will surely be a mark to stand in the record books a long time.
Speaking of Reading, that is where Davies played his youth soccer. Moreover, he was coached there by Brendan Rodgers, who has been incredibly influential in his career. Unfortunately, he never played after the age of 19 due to arthritis in his foot. He moved on almost immediately to coaching and after stints in New Zealand and here in the US he was reunited with Rodgers at Swansea City at the tender age of 25. He moved on with Rodgers to Liverpool and after a brief time back at Reading was with Rodgers again, first at Liverpool, then Celtic and lastly Leicester City. He was an assistant at Spurs for a year before taking over at the Blues this season in his first head coaching position. He just turned 40 (even younger than Mark Briggs, who is 43) and this has been an unprecedented success of a rookie coaching season for him.
With the win at Blackpool the Blues also drew level with Doncaster Rovers’ 33-win record, which has stood since 1947. They have one game left—as does the entirety of League One—and that will be an away fixture at Cambridge United (Saturday, 9:00am, no US TV). Cambridge is 23rd and cannot change its position in the standings. Not that it matters; they are already relegated. so all they have to play for is a little pride and ending the Blues’ season on a slightly sour note.
That’s unlikely to happen after the successes of this week. Both games were ludicrously dominating performances with the good guys averaging 70% possession over the two games and allowing just 6 shots on target. And with adding to the points record and taking sole possession of the wins record as added incentives, the Blues will likely not be holding back.
That leaves little to be decided in League One on the season’s final day. All four relegated teams are set – Shrewsbury Town, Crawley Town and Bristol Rovers go down with Cambridge, with only the order of Bristol and Crawley yet to be decided.
At the top, there is only one playoff spot up for grabs but the order of the teams can still change. Here are the standings going into the weekend:
The Blues and Wrexham are baked in. Three teams can finish in 3rd. The Wycombe-Stockport game is crucial to the next three spots. The winner of that game takes the #3 spot. If they draw, Charlton can take it with a win or would finish 4th if there is a winner in the other game and they achieve their own win. Leyton Orient and Reading cannot finish any higher than 6th. Reading needs a better result than Orient to take the last playoff spot since they trail badly on goal difference but they do have a slightly better matchup and will play at home. All matches kick off at 9:00am CT so no one will have advance notice of what they need to do.
There is one more way that this season can end in record-breaking fashion. Leeds United and Burnley in the Championship are both sitting on 97 points. If they both win tomorrow this will be the first time 3 teams have hit the 100-point mark in a season. And 2 teams have done it only once (Leicester City and Wolves in 2014). Leeds plays at Plymouth Argyle(23rd) and Burnley hosts Millwall (7th).
