Championship Best Bets

Keeping things simple this week with just the one bet as we fancy Derby to win at Birmingham at 13/10. The Rams put up a pretty decent performance at Old Trafford in the FA Cup, threatening a draw and a clean sheet until a fabulous strike from Jesse Lingard broke the deadlock five minutes from time, and getting past Scott Carson has become quite an art recently - he kept five clean sheets in a row in December and apart from that Man United match, you can go all the way back to the start of November to find a side who have scored more than once against Derby.

The stakes are high in this one of course, with both sides needing to win for different reasons, and the Blues have given themselves some hope after back-to-back wins in the Championship. Rather than give them hope in this one however, it could well be misfortune that they run into a side in such great form.

Derby have lost just once in 11 league games - and that was a game they dominated against Ipswich only to lose 1-0. Seven clean sheets in that run also shows a team who are well organised and Gary Rowett will be determined to show his old side how wrong they were to sack him when he was doing such a good job. He’s a man on a mission and will be targeting the Premier League now to enhance his growing reputation.

2pts Derby to beat Birmingham at 5/4

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