{"id":615168,"date":"2026-04-18T14:05:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T14:05:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/615168\/"},"modified":"2026-04-18T14:05:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T14:05:08","slug":"championship-live-build-up-team-news-score-live-text-updates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/615168\/","title":{"rendered":"Championship LIVE: Build-up, team news, score & live text updates"},"content":{"rendered":"

Saints’ prayers being heardpublished at 14:49 BST<\/p>\n

14:49 BST<\/p>\n

Swansea v Southampton (15:00 BST)<\/p>\n

\"TondaImage source, Getty Images<\/p>\n

A year is a long time in any walk of life, more so for football fans.<\/p>\n

This time last year Southampton had only two wins and 10 points to show for their, let’s face it, pretty ropey efforts in the Premier League. They were already relegated and failed to win any of their final 14 games.<\/p>\n

Fast-forward 12 months and while admittedly they have had to change head coach again, a return to the top flight could be on the cards with a timely run which has them top of the Championship’s form guide.<\/p>\n

Victory today would make it seven successive league wins and there is also that FA Cup semi-final against Manchester City to look forward to next weekend.<\/p>\n

“This squad is in a moment and a place where you can put on whoever you want to put on and they’re ready and well able to perform. That’s a big plus for us at this part of the season,” said boss Tonda Eckert who has won back-to-back manager of the month awards.<\/p>\n

Swansea, boasting the division’s top scorer in Zan Vipotnilk, may pose a potential hurdle for the Saints but a run of one win from their past five outings – that victory came at Leicester last Saturday – has a rather end-of-season feel about it.<\/p>\n

A Southampton win would certainly heap the pressure on Ipswich who do not play until tomorrow and still have to visit the south coast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Saints’ prayers being heardpublished at 14:49 BST 14:49 BST Swansea v Southampton (15:00 BST) Image source, Getty Images…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":615169,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-615168","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=615168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615168\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/615169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=615168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=615168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=615168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}