Birmingham City's rivals suffer major double blow to promotion hopes
Birmingham City sit in second at the turn of the year and remain well on track to returning to the Championship at the first time of asking - although the clubs around them at the halfway stage in the season mightn't be who they would've expected after 22 matches.
Many would've predicted that, after such a rapid start to their business in the summer transfer window, Rotherham United would be a frontrunner for promotion - they do, after all, have a track record of getting out of this division, but they find themselves down in 17th and 12 points off the play-offs. Bolton Wanderers are another club of whom much is normally expected, but they're in tenth.
Indeed the sides keeping Blues company at the top are Wrexham, who are on their own staggering trajectory having been in the non-league two seasons ago, and Wycombe Wanderers who, while having experienced the Championship before, aren't often in the position you can currently find themselves in.
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The Chairboys lead the way as we turn into 2025 thanks to a late win over Exeter City on New Year's Day, thus taking advantage of Blues dropping points at Stockport County and Wrexham being turned over at Barnsley. Having gone 18 games unbeaten to set a demanding pace from the beginning of the campaign, Wycombe were briefly halted at Charlton over Christmas, but responded with that 2-1 success last time out.
Matt Bloomfield, the Wycombe manager who is highly thought of, has overseen a sterling job thus far, but it's about to get a little trickier after two transfer decisions at the very beginning of the window which have been totally out of his hands. Wanderers borrowed Aaron Morley from Bolton in the summer and also loaned Caleb Taylor - son of former Blues defender Martin - from West Bromwich Albion.
Within the first two days of the month, both of those players have been recalled by their parent clubs to leave gaping holes in Wycombe's settled and otherwise rarely disrupted starting XI.
Bloomfield said: "The down side is they're not your own. The boys have done too well, really, because they're getting recalled. It's disappointing but we have to say thank you. We have to be ready to react when these things come up and that we're ready to go. Data plays a massive part in our recruitment now. We have to be ready to act because these boys have been huge for us - they've played the majority of minutes since they've been in the building."
