With his side just one win from reaching the Premier League, Wolverhampton manager Mick McCarthy is refusing to get carried away by talk of promotion.
McCarthy’s team are three points away from a place among English soccer’s elite after Andy Keogh’s late goal clinched a 3-2 win at Derby on Monday.
Wolves are seven points clear of third-placed Sheffield United with just three games remaining, and a win against QPR on Saturday would guarantee promotion from the Championship.
But McCarthy doesn’t want his players distracted by the carnival atmosphere that is certain to surround Molineux next weekend.
“That’s dangerous. They will all be wanting the carnival stuff and the fanfare and turning up and giving it large and the big yahoo, but it’s business as usual as far as I am concerned,” the former Republic of Ireland manager said.
“We were hopeless. We were awful. We were rubbish. We couldn’t play any worse and we won the game. We were bobbins, except for Keogh and Jarvo [Matt Jarvis] and the front lads,” he said. “But we kept going and winning games is not always about playing free-flowing football. There are lots of ways to win games and sometimes you have to do it ugly, and that’s what we have done.”
Birmingham’s hopes of going up with Wolves are in the balance after Alex McLeish’s 10 men held on for a 1-1 home draw against Plymouth.
The second-placed Blues are only one point ahead of Sheffield United, while Cardiff are only four points behind with a game in hand.
Sheffield United’s promotion charge was halted by Nottingham Forest, who secured a 0-0 draw at Bramall Lane despite the first-half dismissal of Kelvin Wilson.
Cardiff boosted their late promotion bid with a 3-1 win over play-off rivals Burnley at Ninian Park.
At the bottom of the table, Southampton claimed a crucial 1-0 win over Crystal Palace, Norwich climbed out of the relegation zone with a 2-0 victory against Watford and Barnsley are still in danger of going down after a 3-1 home defeat to Swansea.
Elsewhere, Charlton shared a goalless draw with Coventry, Reading drew 2-2 at Blackpool, Ipswich drew 1-1 at Bristol City, Preston beat Doncaster 2-0 and QPR came from two goals down to defeat Sheffield Wednesday 3-2.
■LUTON RELEGATED
REUTERS, LONDON
Luton Town’s 89-year stay in the Football League came to an end on Monday when they were relegated from League Two (fourth division).
A 0-0 draw with Chesterfield condemned Luton to the drop, although they have been fighting a losing battle all season after starting with a 30-point penalty for financial infringements.
Without the deduction Luton, a top-flight team in the 1980s and the 1988 League Cup winners when they beat Arsenal at Wembley, would have been safe in mid-table.
“It was always going to be difficult in terms of where we were with penalty points,” manager Mick Harford told the club’s Web site, lutontown.co.uk.
“We’ve never been in this position before, but hopefully we’ll bounce straight back,” former Luton striker Harford said.
Luton will now play in the Conference National, a mixture of fulltime and semi-professional clubs.
Bologna on Thursday advanced past Empoli to reach their first Coppa Italia final in more than half a century. Thijs Dallinga’s 87th-minute header earned Bologna a 2-1 win and his side advanced 5-1 on aggregate. Giovanni Fabbian opened the scoring for Bologna with a header seven minutes in. Then Viktor Kovalenko equalized for Empoli in the 30th minute by turning in a rebound to finish off a counterattack. Bologna won the first leg 3-0. In the May 14 final in Rome, Bologna are to face AC Milan, who eliminated city rivals Inter 4-1 on aggregate following a 3-0 win on Wednesday. Bologna last reached the
If the Wild finally break through and win their first playoff series in a decade, Minnesota’s top line likely will be the reason. They were all over the Golden Knights through the first two games of their NHL Western Conference quarter-finals series, which was 1-1 going back to Minnesota for Game 3 today. The Wild tied the series with a 5-2 win on Tuesday. Matt Boldy had three goals and an assist in the first two games, while Kirill Kaprizov produced two goals and three assists. Joel Eriksson Ek, who centers the line, has yet to get on the scoresheet. “I think the biggest
From a commemorative jersey to a stadium in his name, Argentine soccer organizers are planning a slew of tributes to their late “Captain” Pope Francis, eulogized as the ultimate team player. Tributes to the Argentine pontiff, a lifelong lover of the game, who died on Monday at the age of 88, have been peppered with soccer metaphors in his homeland. “Francisco. What a player,” the Argentine Football Federation (AFA) said, describing the first pope from Latin America and the southern hemisphere as a generational talent who “never hogged the ball” and who showed the world “the importance of having an Argentine captain,
Noelvi Marte on Sunday had seven RBIs and hit his first career grand slam with a drive off infielder Jorge Mateo, while Austin Wynn had a career-high six RBIs as the Cincinnati Reds scored their most runs in 26 years in a 24-2 rout of the Baltimore Orioles. Marte finished with five hits, including his eighth-inning homer off Mateo. Wynn hit a three-run homer in the ninth off catcher Gary Sanchez. Cincinnati scored its most runs since a 24-12 win against the Colorado Rockies on May 19, 1999, and finished with 25 hits. Baltimore allowed its most runs since a 30-3 loss to
RSS