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Birmingham 2
(Phillips 13, O’Connor 45)
Barnsley 0

Attendance 17,413

Alex McLeish, the Birmingham City manager, saluted his players after they took over at the top of the Championship. First-half goals from Kevin Phillips and Garry O’Connor extended Birmingham’s 100 per cent start to the season and sent Barnsley to a fourth straight defeat. “It is good that we have been able to keep our momentum going,” McLeish said. “I can’t ask any more than to have collected maximum points.”

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Simon Davey, the Barnsley manager, admits that his side have made a terrible start to the new campaign and hopes for better times soon. “This is the first time that I have lost four games in a row and it has to stop now,” Davey said. “Silly basic errors are costing us. We had chances but didn’t take them and that has to change.”

Blackpool 1
(Kabba 74)
Sheffield United 3
(Quinn 21, Speed pen 57, Halford 78)

Attendance 8,611

The controversial decision to award Sheffield United a penalty that helped them to claim victory at Bloomfield Road brought fury from Simon Grayson, the Blackpool manager.

Shaun Barker, the home side’s defender, was penalised for pulling Ugo Ehiogu’s shirt and Gary Speed, the 39-year-old former Wales captain, converted the resulting penalty to make it 2-0, leaving Grayson to fume. “It was never a penalty,” Grayson said. “I don’t want to get into trouble over this, but it was a case of two players rightly competing for the ball. This is going to be a long hard season for us.”

Kevin Blackwell, Grayson’s opposite number, felt, somewhat predictably, that it was the correct decision. “I have no doubt it was a penalty. There was a lot of pushing and shoving at the corner, and the referee says he saw a shirt being pulled,” the United manager said.

Cardiff 2
(McCormack 3, pen 67)
Norwich 2
(Lupoli 77, 81)

Attendance 18,032