The Biggest Day of the Season for West Ham, Reading and Southampton

This is it. This really is the big one. This is the Championship equivalent of the Mother of all Battles, the rumble in the jungle and the Battle of the Bulge. Results in Leeds, Barnsley and Millwall will go a long way to deciding which two clubs will gain automatic promotion and which of West Ham, Reading and Southampton will be consigned to the playoff - and condemned to another season in the second tier of English football.

Of course, there's only nine points at stake and the blinkered will say that one round of fixtures can't be that important, but the blinkered really don't understand psychology and theories of momentum.Want to know why a helicopter defies gravity, simply apply

P = The square root of (T cubed over 2pA)

where P is power, T is thrust, p is the density of air and A is the area of the rotor disc.

Apply that back to football and P = Promotion, T is the thrust obtained from today's results, d is the density at the top of the table - the bigger the points gap the lower the density - and A is the anxiety of the players.

Reading and Southampton will both see today as the opportunity to establish clear claret and blue air between themselves and Doctor Evil's motley crew. Just three weeks back, after our victory at Blackpool, promotion looked nailed on and Reading and Southampton found themselves competing for the second automatic promotion place. Now, without losing, we are trailing and the Saints and Royals are in the box seat. Our game in hand means that we remain in the mix, but should we lose today and Reading and Southampton both win, that buffer will disappear and we will definitely be trailing in our rivals' wake. The effect, psychologically, on West Ham could be devastating.

Meanwhile, Reading are vulnerable today. Eight straight wins meant that they cut through the pack below us, pulling into the rarefied air at the top of the table and dissipating all anxiety. However, the draw at Doncaster may just have resowed seeds of doubt, the anxiety may have suddenly ratcheted up and Reading now find themselves in the clouds rather than hovering in the thinner air just beneath. When a helicopter loses power it plummets, and should Reading lose today, the rest of the season could be a bit of a mess. Like ourselves, they have won too many games by a tight margin and have rode their luck. If that luck runs out, the reality of gravity may well take over. That said, if they win and we lose, Reading will find themselves in a thermal and there may be no stopping them.

And as for Southampton, should they win and both their rivals lose, they will find themselves in Heaven upsides of Saint Patrick, whose day it is today. We desperately need the Millwall mongrels to savage them today and should they do so, and we end up gaining promotion at the expense of Southampton, then somebody should fly a plane over the New Den at the end of the season trailing a banner reading "Kenny Jackett, West Ham Hero!"

The gap could be intimidating tonight or non existent. Unfortunately, we have by far the hardest game of the three. If we win at Leeds, the thrust effect will be huge. If we lose and our rivals win, we will find ourselves flying in a dense, turbulent storm cloud, and I really don't fancy Allardyce as our pilot in those conditions.