📈 EFL Review: Winless Rooney; perfect Posh; Wrexham on the charge | OneFootball

The Football League served up its usual helping of brilliant goals and astonishing late drama this weekend.

Here are our highlights.

Championship

Moment of the weekend

We’re now five games into the Wayne Rooney experiment at Birmingham and, to all intents and purposes, it has been an unmitigated disaster.

The Blues lost once again on Saturday with Rooney having failed to win any of his first quintuple.

The midlands side were handily dismantled by Sunderland with the Black Cats winning 3-1 in part thanks to a lovely opening goal from Jude Bellingham’s younger brother Jobe.

Rooney’s men have now dropped from fifth to 15th in the Championship since his hiring and next up face basement-dwellers Sheffield Wednesday.

That is, put simply, a must win.

Notable mentions: Boro beat Leicester; Saints climb the table; Ipswich win Swansea thriller.

Player of the weekend

Middlesbrough inflicted back-to-back defeats on Leicester this season with a 1-0 win at the Riverside Stadium on Saturday.

It was a backs-to-the wall win for Michael Carrick’s side with Sam Greenwood bagging the only goal of the game with seven minutes to go.

But it was goalkeeper Seny Dieng who shone throughout with the Boro shot-stopper producing match-winning saves from Ricardo Pereira Jannik Vestergaard and Kelechi Iheanacho.

Notable mentions: Mileta Rajovic (Watford); Alan Browne (Preston); George Hirst (Ipswich)

League One

Moment of the weekend

Boca Juniors vs River Plate it is not, but Saturday saw Peterborough take on Cambridge in the 49th Cambridgeshire derby.

The county’s two professional clubs have enjoyed and endured this season so far, with the Posh up in the play-off places and the U’s battling with mid-table mediocrity.

And the game went very much with the form book as Peterborough dominated from minute one and claimed a morale-boosting 5-0 victory.

Ephron Mason-Clark was the pick of the bunch scoring twice in three second half minutes.

Notable mentions: Charlton claim late draw at Pompey; Oxford hold on for Orient win; Bolton rise with Blackpool victory.

Player of the weekend

Ruben Rodrigues was – to quote some Oxford fan on the artist formerly known as Twitter – ‘unreal’, ‘a wizard’ and ‘the best player in League One’.

It’s been a fairly difficult week at the Kassam Stadium with coach Liam Manning leaving the club after seven months to join Bristol City.

Assistant Craig Short was named as interim and, with the help of a double from Rodrigues, masterminded a 3-2 win over fellow promotion hopefuls Leyton Orient.

With Portsmouth drawing at home to Charlton, Oxford are now just one point behind the south coast table-toppers.

Notable mentions: James Collins (Derby); Phoenix Patterson (Fleetwood); Ephron Mason-Clark (Peterborough)

League Two

Moment of the weekend

After a stuttering start to the season, Wrexham have finally achieved lift off in League Two.

The Welsh side were hit and miss early on in the campaign, missing the talismanic presence of striker Paul Mullins, who missed the opening months with a punctured lung.

But with the 29-year-old back in the side, Phil Parkinson’s men have been on a brilliant run of form of late, adding to their run of 11 games without defeat this weekend with a win over Gillingham.

Ollie Palmer and Ben Tozer were the goalscorers as the Racecourse side climbed to second in the table.

Notable mentions: Stockport continue goal blitz with four at Swindon; Mansfield win at Salford; Barrow climb into play-off places with win at Bradford

Player of the weekend

Grimsby ended their run of six games without a win on Saturday as they beat Morecambe in a five-goal thriller.

Danny Rose was the pick of the players for the Mariners as he scored and assisted in their 3-2 win.

It was the 29-year-old’s eighth and ninth goal involvements of the season so far, and without him Grimsby simply wouldn’t be as high as 21st in the table.

Two vital games are up next for the Lincolnshire side as they take on 23rd place Forest Green and then bottom of the table Sutton.

Win those, and the Blundell Park club could be well clear of the relegation places.

Notable mentions: Connor Jennings (Tranmere); Nick Townsend (Newport); Will Collar (Stockport)