{"id":205690,"date":"2025-12-28T21:46:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-28T21:46:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/205690\/"},"modified":"2025-12-28T21:46:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-28T21:46:07","slug":"five-things-to-look-out-for-in-efl-whose-2025-will-end-on-a-high","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/205690\/","title":{"rendered":"Five things to look out for in EFL: Whose 2025 will end on a high?"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are no doubts about the headliners among the dozen Championship matches on Monday, with leaders Coventry and third-placed Ipswich kick-starting the entertainment in the earliest match (18:00 GMT) at the Coventry Building Society Arena.<\/p>\n

Frank Lampard’s side have an eight-point lead over Middlesbrough, with a further five back to pre-season favourites Ipswich.<\/p>\n

But the Tractor Boys will be hopeful the bruises from their 3-0 victory<\/a> in the reverse fixture on 6 December are still tender.<\/p>\n

Despite that highlight, Kieran McKenna’s side endured a December very much in keeping with a two steps forward-one step back type of season. <\/p>\n

Either side of that crushing win over the Championship leaders, there were draws against Blackburn and on Boxing Day against Millwall, as well as a loss in between to Leicester City.<\/p>\n

Consistency from week to week has not been their strong point this season. <\/p>\n

For Coventry, a free-scoring opening to the season saw them grab top spot and they have not released it since.<\/p>\n

But with just two wins out of five this month and only four goals scored, could they be experiencing a touch of mid-season dip? <\/p>\n

After scrambling past Swansea on Boxing Day, a more emphatic three points here against a side who may yet turn out to be their closest rivals would be huge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There are no doubts about the headliners among the dozen Championship matches on Monday, with leaders Coventry and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":205691,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,139,69,213],"class_list":{"0":"post-205690","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-new-zealand","9":"tag-newzealand","10":"tag-nz","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205690\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/205691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}