Leeds United face Norwich City in key clash at top of the Sky Bet Championship

1 Secrets of Norwich's success are easily discovered

Leeds and Norwich, the top two in the Sky Bet Championship (and the title betting), meet at Elland Road in the second tier’s big game of the weekend.

It’s the mid-point of a crunch fortnight of fixtures for the highflying Canaries, who drew 2-2 with promotion rivals Sheffield United last Saturday and welcome arch enemies Ipswich next weekend.

That will be an even more frosty derby reunion than usual given that the Tractor Boys’ head honcho is none other than one-time Norwich boss Paul Lambert.

Leeds, who won 3-0 at Carrow Road in August, will go six points clear if they can complete the double.

Doubtless Leeds boss Marcelo Bielsa will have done his homework on Norwich, in his own inimitable style, but what isn’t a secret is that Daniel Farke’s men score and concede a lot of goals. Their Championship matches are averaging 3.2 goals.

The Canaries have also become stalemate specialists recently with five draws in their last eight league games.

2 Out-of-form Albion could slip into relegation trouble

It would be quite something if both the Premier League title race and relegation battles were done and dusted well before the final weekend, but that scenario is looking increasingly plausible.

There’s a gap between Liverpool and Manchester City at the top while the bottom three are all long odds-on to still be there in May.

And that’s good news for a team such as Brighton, whose stuttering efforts of late are going unpunished because of the lifelessness of the three stragglers. At least until Albion visited one of those backmarkers, Fulham, on Tuesday and crashed to a 4-2 defeat.

Albion have a seven-point edge over the bottom three but would dearly love a win to settle some nerves having taken just five points from the last possible 27.

This weekend they are at home to Watford, a side they have beaten just once in their last eight meetings. That once was last season, a 1-0 triumph which Brighton disciples would gleefully take a repeat of.

3 Dons boss hoping for a happy return to Exeter

One fixture in particular will have been circled by Paul Tisdale when he received his 2018-19 Sky Bet League Two calendar – and the wait for that showdown is almost over.

Tisdale spent 12 happy and generally successful years at Exeter before severing ties with them last summer and heading off to Milton Keynes Dons.

Now the clubs clash at St James’s Park on Tisdale’s first trip back to a stage where he was once idolised.

He insists he still has the club in his heart after such a long time at the helm but whether Grecians fans remain fond of their ex-boss is more open to question.

Expect plenty of jeers in a showdown of serious significance for both clubs and the layers have pinned their colours firmly to the Milton Keynes mast. There doesn’t appear to be much between these two promotion hopefuls yet the travelling Dons are 23-20 favourites.

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