EFL Tips | Gab Sutton

Gillingham went into October top of the League Two, only to kick off the month’s final game off the back of a five-game losing streak. Four points from the last two has stabilized matters for Mark Bonner’s side.

After a 1-0 victory over leaders Port Vale with which to head into an international interlude, Bonner has had an opportunity to get some of his key players back fit and should be working with closer to his best XI in the run-up to Christmas.

As such, visitors Harrogate might be travelling to Priestfield at just the wrong time as far as Simon Weaver is concerned, although his side halted their own losing streak, of three games, by beating promotion hopefuls Chesterfield 2-1 last weekend.

The Sulphurites have taken 12 of their 19 points this season at Wetherby Road and haven’t won away since August’s 1-0 smash-and-grab job at Colchester.

Middlesbrough had been plagued by wasteful finishing in the first three months of their season, but they’ve always been among the Championship’s most creative sides – and now, that’s starting to show.

Michael Carrick’s side have scored a whopping 12 goals in their last four league games, following a 5-1 thumping of Luton before the international break, and they now have two strikers in Tommy Conway and Emmanuel Latte Lath who are both bang in form.

Saturday’s trip to Oxford is the kind of fixture they might have struggled with earlier in the season, but less so now.

Conversely, the Yellows ground out some home results in the early weeks of the season through the novelty factor of playing in England’s second tier for the first time in a quarter of a century – but now they’ve won just one of their previous five at the Kassam Stadium.

Matty Stevens was one of the most potent strikers in League Two in 2021-22, playing in a pressing Forest Green side under Rob Edwards with extremely attacking wingbacks in Kane Wilson and Nicky Cadden, who helped him score 23 goals – despite missing the final quarter of that campaign due to a long-term injury.

What followed was a tough couple of years, in which Stevens didn’t quite recapture his mojo, struggling both at Walsall and at the New Lawn.

With Wimbledon this season, however, Stevens looks back to his best, helped by the support of a selfless target man in Omar Bugiel – similar to the foil he had at FGR in Jamille Matt.

Stevens already has seven goals for the season, after a brace in last weekend’s 3-1 victory at Barrow, and at this rate he may bag himself quite a few more between now and Christmas.

Save for the off-field turmoil at Reading, there are plenty of parallels to be drawn between them and Peterborough: two well-coached, youthful sides hoping to enter the promotion equation this season, but who are more likely in a season of transition.

The Posh are team jam-packed with talent, the jewel of which being Kwame Poku, who has enjoyed 15 direct goal involvements from the right this season, making him set for a big money move to follow in the footsteps of Ephron Mason-Clark.

Conversely, the Royals are an aggressive, pressing side who engage strongly with a front-three, and look to cut teams open with quick, incisive attacks.

Posh-Royals have brought us plenty of entertainment in the past - most notably the James Bond skit at London 2012 – and we see no reason why this wouldn’t be another high-scoring game.

Even when Accrington Stanley began October still winless, after a 2-1 loss at Cheltenham on the 1st of the month, it had always felt as though John Doolan’s side had the means to create chances and weren’t too far away from stringing some form together.

That has since rung true, with the Reds accruing a whopping 14 points from seven league games, prior to Tuesday’s trip to Wimbledon, including a 3-0 victory at Chesterfield, one of the biggest budgeted clubs in the division.

Accy drew 2-2 with Swindon at the weekend, but on the balance of chances they could easily have won 6-2 on another day.

Whereas, hosts Bradford look painfully imbalanced, with multiple players operating out of position for Graham Alexander’s Play-Off chasers, who have had a blip – and are showing the possible danger of something worse than that - with two points from their previous four.