It's the fourth most watched league in Europe, I am told, with an audience of 9.9m fans. Better than Ligue Un. Better than the Eredivisie or the SPL, better than even Serie A in that respect. Not bad for a second tier competition in which Shola Ameobi can manage a hat-trick eh?

The Championship is like the moonies in many respects. Easy enough to get in to, but you try getting out of it. Realistically, around 18 of its 24 clubs will be aiming for a play-off place come May, and even the other six will harbour ambitions of putting together a useful run to climb the table.

The openess of the league is shown by the fact that, two weeks into the season, only Coventry City hold a 100% record, having followed up a 2-1 win over Roy Keane's Ipswich last week with a solid 2-0 success at Barnsley on Saturday. No mean feat for Sky Blues boss Chris Coleman, who has seen influential players Scott Dann & Danny Fox depart for bigger clubs in the summer, but who has retained a useful spine built around the heroics of goalkeeper Keiran Westwood- arguably the best outside the top flight- new signing Sammy Clingan, and strikers Leon Best & Clinton Morrison- both of whom were on the scoresheet at Oakwell this weekend.

In the North East, there was finally something to shout about for fans of Newcastle & Middlesbrough, both of whom followed up opening day draws with comprehensive three goal victories. Newcastle's first home game at this level since 1993 drew a crowd of almost 37,000, and most went home happy after Ameobi's hat-trick (which the local born striker dedicated to the memory of Sir Bobby Robson). Equally pleasing for Magpies fans, in a week where Damien Duff has departed the club for Fulham, were the performances of Kevin Nolan, Joey Barton & Alan Smith, Premier League players turning in Premier League displays.

Middlesbrough's win was no less impressive, three goals away to Paulo Sousa's Swansea side, including a rasper from Marvin Emnes (his first league goal for the club) and Boro are, at present at least, clinging onto the likes of Tuncay, Afonso Alves, Gary O'Neil & David Wheater as the transfer window approaches its end.

They are joined on four points by Cardiff, who had Michael Chopra to thank for a draw at Blackpool and West Brom, who benefitted from a Chris Cohen own goal and a Rob Earnshaw penalty miss to defeat much-fancied Nottingham Forest at the City Ground. Leicester are also sitting pretty with four from six, after a goal-less draw with Ipswich at an emotional Portman Road, neither side looking particularly potent in the Suffolk sunshine. Sheffield United picked up their first win of the season, Jamie Ward and £3m signing Ched Evans on target as the Blades brushed aside Watford at Bramall Lane.

But the real talking point of the weekend undoubtedly concerned former United boss Neil Warnock and his Crystal Palace side. Their day seemed bad enough when Nicky Maynard grabbed a late winner for Bristol City at Ashton Gate, but events that had preceded it were at best incredible, at worst farcical. On loan striker Freddie Sears had seemingly given Palace the lead with a first half strike, only to see referee Rob Shoebridge inexplicably rule that the goal did not count. Replays showed the ball clearly hitting the very back of the net, before bouncing out of the goal off the net support bar. Neither Shoebridge, nor his assistant, saw fit to award the goal, leaving Warnock, and his chairman Simon Jordan, raging.

"What troubles me was that the Bristol City players saw what was going on and by saying nothing, that's cheating," said Jordan, whilst Warnock was adamant that Bristol City should have allowed Palace to score in the name of fairness.

Speaking of fairness, in fairness to Bristol City, several of their players claim that the referee was insistent that the goal had been disallowed for an infringement (though the lack of a whistle or flag seems to betray such a notion), and that it is not their role to officiate the game. City may also point to a Paul Hartley goal wrongly ruled out in the second half for offside as an example of evening things out. Their chief executive, Colin Sexstone, refuted the bile spat by Warnock & Jordan towards his club, stating:

"We have come to expect this from Warnock and Jordan. They are shouting and bawling without knowing the facts. As far as I understand it, the goal was disallowed for an infringement."

Predictably, the old argument for video technology has been dusted off and re-hashed into a series of pompous and wise-after-the-event articles, but in this case it has to be said the incident was both poorly made, and poorly communicated. The officials have been told by referee's chief Keith Hackett that they will be given at least a fortnight off, and Warnock & Jordan can expect an FA headed letter to drop through their letterboxes any time soon I'm sure.

Elsewhere, there was nothing like the drama of Ashton Gate at Doncaster, Peterborough or Plymouth, all of whom recorded 1-1 home draws against Preston, Sheffield Wednesday & QPR respectively, but there were plenty of incidents at Glanford Park as Scunthorpe ensured that Nigel Clough's Derby suffered a first reverse of the season in a five-goal thriller, Martyn Woolford eventually settling matters for Nigel Adkins' improving side, who put their four goal walloping at Cardiff behind them here.