A strong October and perfect November took Coventry City well clear of their position at the bottom of the Championship table. The Sky Blues have recorded a single win since the beginning of December, that being at home to West Bromwich Albion, but still sit firmly in the centre of a tightly packed Championship mid-table group. Swedish striker Viktor Gyökeres is always the figure to watch in Mark Robins side, leading the line with 12 league goals. Only Middlesbrough’s Chupa Akpom has scored more this season than the 24-year-old. Dutch midfielder Gustavo Hamer carries undoubted quality in the centre of the park, though his discipline record can impact his appearance numbers across an entire campaign.

David Wagner had the perfect start to life as Norwich City head coach. Away at Deepdale last weekend, the Canaries stormed to a 4-0 win over Preston North End. Norwich led 3-0 after less than half an hour, with both Finnish striker Teemu Pukki and Kieran Dowell, deployed on the right of a 4-3-3, grabbing braces across the 90 minutes. Scot Kenny McLean and Brazilian Gabriel Sara formed part of the midfield, with the dynamic pair of Dimitris Giannoulis and Max Aarons occupying the respective left-back and right-back roles. Out of form when Dean Smith was dismissed, the instant impact win under Wagner has moved the Norfolk outfit to within touching distance of the second tier play-off places.

Norwich City are on the road again for a second consecutive weekend, and against opposition in a similar position and morale to that of Preston North End. Coventry have recently suffered defeats at the hands of both the current top two, teams the Canaries aspire to reach before the end of the season. Victory here in the West Midlands will go a long way towards helping with that. Wagner’s side have a lot of quality compared to others in the division, it is time for the team to go on a run that proves it.

Mark Hudson’s departure from the Cardiff dugout felt inevitable after an initial uplift in performances slowly became poor results. In the end his reign was almost exactly the same as Steve Morison’s before him, which may perhaps in the end point to the fact that the player quality is as much the problem as the management team that have been removed.

The problem is trying to improve that at this stage of the season. A ton of players were brought in during the summer window specifically for Steve Morison and the style of play that he was trying to initiate. Callum Robinson has been the bright spark and scored twice in the FA Cup against Leeds in midweek. With no permanent manager in charge at the moment it may well be that a change of tactics will be employed short term just to try and do something different. Taking the shackles off the players could get some positive supporter feeling into the club and set things up a bit better for a new man coming in. Seven goals in that FA Cup replay suggests that this could be the case.

Millwall really need a result here too so they will be going out for the win. The Lions’ recent away performance against Middlesbrough was a tough one, but Boro are one of the best defensive sides in the Championship at the moment, especially at home. We know that Gary Rowett’s side have plenty of goal threats in their side, despite missing the youthful exuberance of Tyler Burey still, Tom Bradshaw and Zian Flemming in particular cause serious threat to Cardiff.

Seven of Millwall’s last ten away matches have breached the over 1.5 goals line and I think that between the disorganisation of Cardiff and the desire to get back to winning ways from Millwall there is a recipe here to see some goals despite the struggles that Cardiff especially have had in front of goal recently.

Kolo Toure managed to pick up his first point in management last week at Hull, albeit they suffered a late equaliser to deny them all three. This is always a bitter blow to recover from and they probably will not welcome the sight of Luton coming to the DW Stadium off the back of that.

Wigan across the season as a whole deserve their position in the bottom three. They have become very leaky defensively since Toure came in as well, they have not yet been able to keep an opponent under 1xG at home since Toure’s reign began. Indeed they have lost all three of those home games and the aggregate scores in those matches are 3-10 and the xG difference is -4.3 so those defeats have been deserved.

Having recently lost Nathan Broadhead the Latics are very light up front. Ashley Fletcher will be given a belated chance having featured very little under Leam Richardson, but Fletcher has never been prolific so far in his career. The burden for goals will likely fall to Will Keane, but again, he is a player that has slowly converted into more of a 9.5/10 role recently. Integrating the likes of Steven Caulker, Miguel Azeez, and Christ Tiehi into the side may also be a small problem to solve for rookie manager Toure.

It is a different story recently for Luton on the road. They have won their last two away matches and deservedly so. Trips to QPR and Huddersfield have proven fruitful and what will please Rob Edwards is that in those matches they have really restricted their opponents’ chances. The 2-3 reverse at home to West Brom will sting the Hatters, but it may well serve to reinforce the message of concentration and keeping the work rate going for the full 90 minutes. The good news from that match was that both Carlton Morris and Elijah Adebayo got on the scoresheet so the main men up front are still in good form.

If the patterns of performance for both teams hold somewhere near to recent trends then the price on Luton draw no bet is a solid proposition.

Swansea travel to the capital as a team that has no doubt about themselves in the way that they want to go about playing their football. That playing style has carried the team to some good performance levels this season, even if it isn’t always matched by the results.

QPR’s home record sits well in the bottom half of the division and whilst they still create a higher xG than their opponents at home, as do 21 of the 24 Championship clubs, there isn’t much in it. Swansea have a perfectly fair away performance record according to the xG data, across the season they have created a very similar xG to what they have conceded. Playing against a team such as QPR with a relatively poor home record to the rest of the league this is a positive sign for the Swans to potentially create more chances than QPR here.

Indeed, this is what Swansea have managed to do in every away game since the World Cup break. Despite results being one win, one draw and one loss, each of those matches have seen Swansea be the better side on paper. With problem forward Michael Obafemi’s future seemingly being out of the squad it has allowed Russell Martin to forge on without him and using Joel Piroe as a pivot with the likes of Liam Cullen and Oli Cooper buzzing around the Dutchman has worked really well of late.

QPR under Neil Critchley remain a work in progress. The transition between styles is causing a little bit of uncertainty and producing performances that are, at best, average. Home form has been a concern with a series of defeats at Loftus Road. This is backed up by the xG data which suggests that QPR were the losers of the xG battle in each of their home games since the World Cup break. Two of those were against Burnley and Sheffield United though so it is a tough sample.

Either way, there is enough evidence to suggest that Swansea are a good price draw no bet to get the win at QPR.