Cardiff City maintained their place at the top of League One with a convincing victory over Mansfield, while Swansea gave away a 2-0 lead against West Brom.

Elsewhere, Wrexham and Newport played out contrasting draws, as the former came from behind against Blackburn Rovers to level at 1-1, while Newport’s search for a win continued as they were pegged back by Barrow.

Let’s get into the action.

Swansea give up two-goal lead to Baggies

New Swansea boss Vitor Matos has been in the job less than a week and is already under pressure.

Despite storming into a 2-0 lead inside 15 minutes at the Hawthorns, three second half goals sunk the Swans as they slumped  to a fifth successive second-tier defeat, their worst league run since the club’s final days in the Premier League seven years ago.

Swansea fell to 21st in the Championship after that defeat, with Matos saying that the “most important thing is that we stick together”.

“I think we are in the beginning of a new process,” the Swansea head coach said.

“I think when you look to the table, you need to see that you are in relegation fight. [But] heading now to December, there are still a lot of games.

“What I see now is that we need togetherness. We need to stay together as a club because the moment is not easy, the moment is not what we all want.”

Cardiff see of Mansfield in ‘satisfying’ victory

In contrast to the Swansea struggles, Cardiff continued their march to the top of League One, with a convincing 3-0 victory over bottom-half side Mansfield.

Goals from Will Fish, Yousef Salech, and Cian Ashford saw off the visitors, with Cardiff showing their lesser spotted defensive steele.

Asked if this was one of his team’s more complete performances of the season, Barry-Murphy said: “We’ve had different points of the season where we’ve been pretty good, but I thought, yeah, consistently we were very good today.

“In the key moments of the game we created enough chances to score more goals, but we didn’t and then when it’s 1-0 you can always think it can become difficult, so to get the second goal at that point was crucial for us.

“The togetherness of the team was very satisfying for me and then the overall performance levels of the whole team in general was very pleasing.”

With Rubin Colwill out for up to three months, this performance was a timely one for Cardiff and Barry-Murphy.

Wrexham snatch point to maintain unbeaten run

Wrexham’s unbeaten run in the Championship stretched to eight games as Max Cleworth’s diverting touch secured a point at home to Blackburn Rovers.

The draw sees them sit ninth in the table, a significant turnaround after a tough start to life in the second tier.

“I think it’ll be mixed emotions,” said Phil Parkinson.

“We’re pleased with the run we’re on, we’d love for it to have been three points but sometimes you’ve got to accept that the positives of the day were that the new lads have come in and had a great taste of us going to the end in games.

“Time and time again here [at home] we’ve got late winners, we’ve got late equalisers and it’s so important that we keep that belief and drive to the very last kick of the game.”

When asked if the potential disappointment of not beating Valerien Ismael’s side serves as proof that Wrexham are improving, Parkinson responded: “Yeah, definitely.

“We can have a good look at the game today and what we could have done better and reflect on that and what we did well like we always do.

Newport improve but fail to find victory

Despite leading twice, Newport were pegged back by Barrow to draw 2-2 in new boss Christian Fuchs’ first home match in charge.

The result leaves Newport, who had lost straight league fixtures after an opening weekend draw with Notts County, five points from safety at the bottom of the table.

Despite this, Fuchs feels that there is hope for the Exiles fans.

“We wanted to get the fans on board right away. How they have supported the team was incredible,” said Fuchs.

“They have been suffering as much as we did over quite a stretch now. We created some sort of hope amongst everybody, especially with the team, they (fans) have seen what they are capable of doing.

“The starting point was today and now we’ll move forward. It’s just the beginning, we’ve worked together for just one week. In my eyes, it’s a massive improvement.

“We’ll keep working and address what the issues were and how we can be defensively better, but overall, a top performance from the boys.”

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