Gab Sutton's EFL Winners & Losers - September 20-21
Gab Sutton 
It was another chaotic weekend across the EFL, with surprise results for betting sites shaking up the Championship, League One and League Two..
Free Bets EFL expert Gab Sutton picks out his biggest winners and losers from the latest round of action.
Winners
Sheffield Wednesday
Sheffield Wednesday may not pick up many points this season, but they’re likely to accrue more of them away from home than at Hillsborough.
Whereas in Owlerton, supporters are staying away so as to avoid lining owner Dejphon Chansiri’s pockets, in theory forcing him to sell, they’re also saving all their money and energy for the away games.
The 2K who made the trip to Fratton Park were given a precious moment of joy, winning 2-0 at Portsmouth, thanks to a Barry Bannan free-kick and a George Brown second on the break.
Youngsters like forward Brown and defender Ernie Weaver breaking through has been the one ray of light in a sad situation in the Steel City, as Henrik Pedersen intends to unify the team for an unlikely survival.
Lincoln
Starting with just one defeat in nine, Lincoln have carried their positive form from the back-end of last season into 2024-25, going 3rd with a 3-1 victory over ante-post promotion favourites Luton.
The Imps expected to suffer the loss of star midfielder Ethan Erhahon, who went to Bolton this summer, but Conor McGrandles has stepped up admirably in his absence.
There’s lots of defensive responsibility on City’s central midfielders, with two forwards playing out wide in their 4-4-2, albeit industrious profiles in Rob Street and Ben House, and attacking full-backs in Tendayi Darikwa and Adam Reach, but McGrandles covers plenty of ground and offers plenty of security.
Michael Skubala’s side could be ones to watch.
Gillingham
Gillingham extended their unbeaten run to 21 matches, stretching back to last season, at Newport on Saturday, as they overturned an early deficit to secure a 3-1 victory at Rodney Parade.
Gareth Ainsworth and Richard Dobson have fostered a real togetherness at Priestfield, as the club looks to put a recent era of underperformance behind them.
The Gills relied on evergreen goalkeeper Glenn Morris to bag all three points in South Wales, but otherwise the likes of talented defender Sam Gale, versatile midfielder Robbie McKenzie and target man Josh Andrews have starred for the Kent outfit, who consistently find themselves on the right side of fine margins.
Losers
Norwich
Esteemed Norwich City journalists and content creators have described Norwich City’s 3-2 defeat at home to Wrexham as one of the worst performances they’ve witnessed at Carrow Road.
After a summer in which the club have spent big, adding lots of peak-aged performers to a talented, youthful group, fans were expecting better than what was served up on Saturday.
Among the criticisms of boss Liam Manning are that Jose Cordoba doesn’t have the pace and agility to be an outside centre-back in this system, a bit like being left-back in practice, and Ante Crnac was very lucky – both to start the game, and to not be withdrawn earlier.
Back to the drawing board for the Canaries.
Luton
As a club with the financial head-start of Premier League parachute payments in League One, four defeats in the opening eight games, and sitting 11th, wasn’t exactly what Luton had in mind for their start to the season.
After a 3-1 loss at Lincoln, boss Matt Bloomfield has come in for criticism for deploying centre-back Nigel Lonwijk as a right wing-back - at the expense of Gideon Kodua, who was dropped from the squad entirely, and Shayden Morris – and starting the out-of-form Kal Naismith.
It might be early in the season, but Luton are already eight points off the summit, so Bloomfield needs to rebalance his team - and quickly.
MK Dons
Another ante-post promotion favourite, with a budget dwarfing those of their competitors, who have had a slow start – this time in League Two.
MK Dons have had a few years in which their stylistic ideals were executed poorly and didn’t serve them, which enticed the club, under new Kuwaiti ownership, to sack off those ideals and appoint Paul Warne.
Understandable though that was, given Warne’s record in even the division above, it was something of an outcome-driven move which could leave the club short of ideas if this goes wrong.
Warne inherits a group of players that were used to playing a certain way, and for them to get used to a completely different style that requires completely different qualities, could take an amount of time that the higher-ups just don’t have.
Either way, the Buckinghamshire outfit are languishing in 14th at this early stage, having amassed just 12 points from their first nine.
