The first part of our annual 1-24 Championship season preview focuses on the bookies’ favourites for promotion, a list dominated by sides coming out of the Premier League with parachute payments with one or two notable exceptions.

Listen to the debate with @AnalyticsQPR and the oppo interviews that went into this preview over on our Patreon - Part One - Bottom Half and Part Two - Top Half are both live now.

Ipswich Town 3/1 (title odds)

Last Season: 19th in Prem The American owners who have revolutionised the club since its stagnation and then regression under Marcus Evans are called Gamechanger Ltd, and my God they certainly did that.

A not-entirely-unexpected outcome for an Ipswich side that hadn’t been in the top flight since 2002 and more recently spent four years in League One before leapfrogging two levels at once. Given the absolute mess clubs like Leicester, Southampton and Burnley have made of their Premier League returns of late, having recently spent long periods consolidated at that level (and in the Foxes’ case even winning the thing) you could probably guess a team that was playing league matches against Exeter and Fleetwood as recently as May 2023 would have some logistical difficulties come August 2024 with a fixture list that started Liverpool H, Man City A.

Struggle they did. No wins in the first ten games (then along came Spurs, because of course), one win in the first 15 games, one home win all season long, just four wins in the league in total, two points from the last eight games, 27 points lost from winning positions, eight games where they conceded four goals and one where they conceded six… this is becoming disturbingly common for promoted teams anyway, never mind the ones who’ve jumped two divisions in two seasons. Doesn’t make it any easier to sit through mind, CEO Mark Ashton described the reality check as “brutal”.

Two schools of thought from here…

The first is that Ipswich have played the modern English football game perfectly and set themselves up beautifully for the next few seasons. They spent their money and built their Championship team in the more favourable FFP/PSR climes of League One so only minor tinkering was required to continue that momentum straight through the second tier – Sunderland stylee. Last summer, once again, they had more than half an eye on the season beyond the one they were facing – like a snooker player always thinking three shots ahead. They recruited players that would either be sellable assets, or terrific talents to bring back to the Championship with them, rather than getting all QPR about it and chucking £120k a week at Julio Cesar and handing the keys to the gun cabinet over to Joey Barton. They made a better fist of the Premier League than Southampton, and return to the second tier in far better condition than stricken Leicester.

The second is they actually got away with a crap season. Awww, bless em, little old Ipswich from League One, so ruddy bloody brave. Look at the little fella go, swinging his arms around, running up that hill, beating Chelsea even. This was no fairytale underdog story - they spent more than £130m last summer. You’d probably expect more than one home win for that, wouldn’t you? A nine-figure transfer outlay on a team wholly ill-equipped to cope with the physicality of the top division, with expensive duds like Kalvin Phillips slobbing around the place. And as if listening to Jamie Redknapp’s post-game analysis on it all wasn’t enough to have you ordering two pints of bleach and a packet of cheese and drain cleaner please Keith, here comes fucking Ed Sheeran into my television. Where’s the remote? Well, you had it last. Just unplug it at the wall. Unplug it at the wall right now. Jesus Christ, that was close, I thought he was going to rap for a minute there.

Kieran McKenna got a completely free pass for the whole thing and everybody is just expecting them to sweep the Championship board this year with 100 points and 100 goals.

Ins >>> Azor Matusiwa, 27, DM, Stade Rennais, £10m >>> Ashley Young, 40, RB, Everton, Free >>> David Button, 36, GK, Reading, Free >>> Cedric Kipre, 28, RGK, Stde Reims, Loan

Outs >>> Liam Delap, 22, CF, Chelsea, £30m >>> Axel Tuanzebe, 27, RB, Burnley, Free >>> Cameron Burgess, 29, CB, Swansea, Free >>> Marcus Harness, 29, AM, Huddersfield, Free >>> Mass Luongo, 32, CM, Millwall, Free >>> Sam Morsy, 33, CM, Kuwait SC, Undisclosed

This Season: I’m very much in the former category. I think Ipswich have played a blinder over the last three years and are in terrific shape for this season. Best part of two dozen senior, seasoned, talented Championship players across the squad and money in the bank to add more as the window progresses.

The money they spent last summer went either on Omari Hutchinson and Liam Delap types who it seems they’re going to quickly turn around at handsome profit (Delap is gone, Hutchinson is trying to force the issue and was left out of the pre-season tour of France), or on Jaden Philogene and Jacob Greaves types who will simply go back to being the best players in this division in their positions.

You read down the squad list and you actually forget who’s here. Philogene, yes, and Jack Clarke too, for the wings, but Chieo Ogbene as well, Sammie Szmodics, and all the Chaplin, Hurst and Broadhead types who got them promoted in the first place. That’s just the attack. Flying left back Leif Davis remains, Dara O’Shea is here, Wes Burns is fit again, Harry Clarke is back from Sheff Utd, there are six first team goalkeepers and they’re all better than any one of ours…

Transfer business has been slow and steady so far this summer – Tom Daley’s 40-year-old tribute act Ashley Young one to look forward to for the Loftus Road faithful – but rush goalkeeper Cedric Kipre returns to these shores to add power, height and handling to the middle of the defence, there’s a chunky bid in for Middlesbrough’s Hayden Hackney and those Flynn Downes return rumours don’t go away. Chuba Akpom has chosen Ipswich over Birmingham - advantage Birmingham.

Nevertheless, they built a ‘best of the Championship’ team, they kept the manager who masterminded and drove the whole double promotion in the first place, and they’re in receipt of parachute payments. Luongo and Morsy go out, replaced by Matusiwa and Hackney. Be afraid, be very afraid.

You do just wonder if there’s a touch of the Luton’s here though – a club we said in this preview last year had been super smart, used their Premier League windfall wisely, were well set for a top four finish, and very quickly got themselves relegated all over again. The momentum of the double promotion is gone, a season in which you win four matches and only one of them at home does produce a significant hangover, Delap is the headline departure but there’s also been a bleed of Burgess, Luongo and Morsy types who’ve been key to the McKenna revolution over the past three years. Hutchinson chucking his toys around trying to force a move a week before the season is unhelpful mood music. Will we look back and say they were too complacent, should have shaken it up a bit more, went on a season too long perhaps?

It’s perhaps not as cut and dried as a lot of the previews and odds are making out, but we’ve got them comfortably in the automatics.

Manager: Kieran McKenna There have been no expectations on this club or manager for the last two seasons, they’ve been able to operate and play with complete freedom, and that’s not the case this year where everybody inside and outside the town is expecting a promotion.

Oppo View – Phil Ham, TWTD.co.uk “Last season was chastening. The Premier League has changed an awful lot in 22 years and quickly it became evident we were in for a battle. We thought we were getting to grips with things at Christmas, beating Chelsea at Portman Road and coming within a couple of minutes of winning at Fulham, but after Wolves found Champions League form from February onwards, there was an acceptance that barring a miracle - or points deductions for financial infractions - we were going down.

“I think we will live up to the hype. We still need to add to the squad, certainly in central midfield, but it’s a stronger squad which has come down than went up with the additions of players such as Sammie Szmodics, Jacob Greaves and Jaden Philogene, who were among the division’s top players the last time they were in the Championship. We also seem the most stable of the relegated clubs, which should count in our favour. The best news of the summer has been Kieran McKenna remaining in post with little other than idle speculation that he might join Brentford to concern supporters. I doubt there will be a better manager in the Championship in the season ahead.

Prediction 1st (@AnalyticsQPR – 3rd) Yawn.

Southampton 5/1

Last Season: 20th in Prem Listen, if I went out with Lucy Pinder, I’d play around at the back a lot as well, but Russell Martin’s hubris really got him and his team found out at Premier League level.

For a long time it looked like this lot wouldn’t even surpass Derby’s famously horrendous point total. In the end they crawled just past it and ended up with 12, which really says more about Paul “don’t be nice to me, tell me how much I’m sweating” Jewell’s Rams than it does about anything remotely competent Southampton produced last season. The PopBitch rumour that Martin had been swanning around last summer telling anybody within earshot he was a shoo-in for the Man City job is just too delicious for anybody who’s ever had to sit through his football/press conferences. Completing 1,500 passes at home to Ross County much more his level.

A summer recruitment operation that just woefully underestimated the physicality and strength of the Premier League gave way to a catastrophic opening of eight defeats and a draw with Ipswich from the first nine games. They won the tenth, at home to Everton, then lost 11 and drew two of the next 13. Martin was deservedly binned, but Ivan Juric was a bigger joke still and things continued to spiral almost implausibly. They lost 5-1 at home to Chelsea, 5-0 to Spurs and 5-0 to Brentford inside a month. Their last win was February 1 – the Saints finished with 12 defeats and three draws in the last 15. They finished with identical 1-3-15 records home and away, 47 goals were conceded at St Mary’s, 86 in total (more than two a game on average).

A complete embarrassment. And, let’s have it right, totally foreseeable.

Ins >>> Damion Downs, 21, CF, Koln, £7m >>> Joshua Quarshie, 20, CB, Hoffenheim, £3m

Outs >>> Kamaldeen Sulemana, 23, LW, Atalanta, £15m >>> Jan Bednarek, 29, CB, Porto, £6m >>> Samuel Amo-Ameyaw, 18, RW, Strasbourg, £5m >>> Paul Onuachu, 31, CF, Trabzonspor, £5m >>> Kyle Walker-Peters, 28, RB, West Ham, Free >>> Joe Lumley, 30, GK, Bristol City, Free >>> Aaron Ramsdale, 27, GK, Newcastle, Loan >>> Juan Larios, 21, LB, Leonesa (Spain), Loan >>> Adam Lallana, 37, AM, Retired

This Season: The last six promoted teams have all been relegated straight back and these blowouts at the bottom of the Premier League where teams aren’t even able to compete are becoming worryingly more frequent. One of the saddest things about it is though, they’re always the favourites to go straight back up and at the moment invariably do.

Southampton were the worst team the Premier League has seen in more than 20 years, and yet they return to this division with a war chest the size of the Galactic Empire, a squad so flushed with talent that Handsome Ronnie Edwards is de-facto seventh in line to even get in at centre half, half a dozen sellable assets at the £20m+ mark, and Monday Night Football trendy Will Still (32) in the dugout ready to tell you where he gets all his great ideas from.

Already this summer, to go with the parachute payment, around £35m has been recouped selling Kamaldeen Sulemana, Jan Bednarek, Samuel Amo-Ameyaw and Paul Onuachu. Kyle Walker-Peters has gone to West Ham on a free. Joe Lumley has been left in the woods. More will surely follow. In Taylor Harwood-Bellis, Tyler Dibling and Joe Aribo there’s likely £100m worth of sales to come. Aaron Ramsdale has gone, weirdly, on loan to Newcastle. Forest are keen on Mateus Fernandes at £35m. And with that money you’re going to be able to furnish a squad that already has a plethora of outstanding Championship players like Edwards, Sheff Wed’s outstanding loanee Shea Charles, Will Smallbone, Flynn Downes, Fandab Edozi and on and on it goes. They’re selecting an attack from Ross Stewart, Cameron Archer, Adam Armstrong, Ben Brereton-Diaz and others. Their worst striker would be everybody else’s best.

It’s, sick, really. This is a team that finished last with 12 points.

I guess the trip wires are as follows. Having a season quite as cataclysmically bad must create some form of hangover, leave some doubt in players’ minds, leave some residual confidence issues. Surely? They won two matches all season. Will Still talks a good game and has burned bright, early in France, but is unproven at this level and in this country – is he all chat? There are significant outgoings and incomings still to go, plenty of surgery left to do, with the season starting this week - who’s the goalkeeper, for instance? Jason Wilcox and Rasmus Ankesen, who have at various points overseen the recruitment here with great success, are now elsewhere and last summer’s shopping spree was a disasterclass. Will the money be spent wisely by new sporting director Johannes Spors?

And, perhaps most importantly, there is absolutely no patience left in this support base whatsoever. They’ve gone from being one of the better run clubs in the country, to one of the worst. Sport Republic took over and established Premier League club and have wrought two relegations in three seasons upon it. They’ve rattled through dozens of players and four years of Ralph Hasenhuttl pragmatism has given way to Ruben Selles, Nathan Jones, Russell Martin and Ivan Juric, three of whom didn’t even make it to 20 games in charge.

This is a large, expectant, aggy home crowd. It’ll need to go well immediately. Sadly, it almost certainly will.

Manager: Will Still Appeared on the Jake Humphrey High Performance podcast.

Oppo View: Martin Sanders (@FootballMartin_) “Loads of reasons behind last season’s failure. A poor summer transfer window, a manager that was inexperienced at that level, they recruited wrong because they didn’t have the right people doing it. They started the season ill-prepared with a manager wanting to play a style of football that was not suitable for a promoted team in the Premier League. Not good enough. Spent a lot of money on a good goalkeeper in Ramsdale but that’s no use if you don’t back it up with good midfielders and good strikers.

“There will be a hangover but top two is a necessity and we should be more than good enough to achieve that with the squad we’ve got and the goals that will be scored by the front three or four players. We’ve got great options higher up the field so I expect us to end up in a good place.”

Prediction – 2nd (@AnalyticsQPR – 1st) Yawn.

Birmingham 7/1

Last Season: 1st in League One If there’s one thing Birmingham City really hate, it’s being sixth in the Championship. Gary Rowett was sacked and replaced by Gianfranco Zola with disastrous consequences when they last got that high in this league, and having spent the best part of half a decade and a near total financial collapse getting back there again they then binned off another effective but unfashionable name in John Eustace to replace him with another chump you’ve all heard of in Wayne Rooney.

The relegation that followed, helped in no small part by Jimmy Dunne’s last minute wonder goal at Loftus Road over Easter, was one of the funniest things that’s happened in the Championship in the last 20 years. Like every other club, there’s been a documentary film crew following them around behind the scenes and the first cuts of Tom Brady interacting with “Wazza” are starting to come into the public domain. Birmingham need to generate substantial revenues to support their spend and there aren’t many better ways of doing that than sticking Wayne Rooney and Tom Brady in a room, turning a camera on and selling the tape to Amazon Prime Video. In one a clearly hungover Waz gives it the full “gimme five minutes, fella” by telling Tom to “come back this afternoon and we’ll show you a bit of the stuff we do”. In another Wayne explains the offside rule to his defence with the aid of a video wall, pausing briefly halfway through to say “do you wanna come do this?” when one of his coaches enters the room. If the trap is broken, says Wayne, and they get the ball in here “just fucking smash him”. Brady looks on nonplussed. “I’m not sure about our head coach’s work ethic” says the former Super Bowl winning quarterback.

As Thom Gibbs points in his excellent column on the whole comedy series, the Americans really struggle to wrap their head around Rooney because their achieve Super Bowl rings by being practically perfect in every way, dedicating life to craft, watching every morsel of food or drop of liquid that goes in their mouth, living and breathing the sport, and they assume somebody with Rooney’s credentials must have done the same. Then they meet him and he’s motoring through a third pack of Marlboro Red after a long night hanging round the student union bar because it’s got a late licence. They expect Tiger Woods, but he’s John Daly.

It could also turn out to be one of the best things that’s happened to Birmingham City. Like Sunderland and Ipswich they have taken advantage of the more favourable FFP/PSR set up in the division below to build a team and momentum that is probably good to give the Championship a red hot crack with only superficial additions and a couple of nice shiny things. The starfucking that led them to the Rooney disaster was replaced with a much smarter, shrewder, long term appointment in Chris Davies who has built a clearly defined style and ethos for the team.

They were always going to win a poor, weak League One at an absolute canter. Most of their opponents just set out to keep the score down. In the end, 111 points, 24 clear of third, 84 goals scored, and just three defeats. Bit of a farce really, but hard to begrudge a support base that’s been through what this lot have suffered in recent times a fun year of flat track bullying.

Ins >>> Kyogo Furuhashi, 30, CF, Stade Rennais, £8m >>> Taylor Gardner-Hickman, 23, RB, Bristol City, £1.5m >>> Bright Osayi-Samuel, 27, RB, Fenerbahce, Free >>> Kanya Fujimoto, 26, AM, Gil Vicente, Free >>> Demarai Gray, 29, LW, Al-Ettifaq, Free >>> Phil Neumann, 27, CB, Hannover, Free >>> Alfons Sampsted, 27, RB, Twente, Undisclosed >>> Tommy Doyle, 23, CM, Wolves, Loan >>> Eiran Cashin, 23, CB, Brighton, Loan >>> James Beadle, 20, GK, Brighton, Loan

Outs >>> Romelle Donovan, 18, RW, Brentford, £3m >>> Ayumu Yokoyama, 22, LW, Genk, £2.5m >>> Alfie May, 32, CF, Huddersfield, £1m >>> Brandon Khela, 20, CM, Peterborough, £500k >>> Emmanuel Longelo, 24, LB, Motherwell, £100k >>> Myung-jae Lee, 31, LB, Dajeon Hana, Free >>> Emil Hansson, 27, LW, Blackpool, Loan >>> Bailey Peacock-Farrell, 28, GK, Blackpool, Loan >>> Grant Hanley, 33, CB, Released >>> Lukas Jutkiewicz, 36, CF, Retired

This Season: Having said they built a Championship team in League One, as is the trend of the moment, Blues have certainly shown no sign of slowing down in the transfer stakes this summer. Ryan Allsop, despite some really dodgy spells in the Championship at Cardiff and Hull, was brilliant for Blues last year and key to the way they build from the back but has already apparently immediately been jettisoned to bring England U21 stopped James Beadle in from Brighton despite a mixed spell at Sheff Wed – for instance.

Money is being spent here. Money is being forked over at an ever more frightening rate. If not on transfer fees so far this summer, then certainly on wages. The Knighthead ownership consortium, led by Tom Wagner, has huge ambitions to move this club into a new stadium surrounded by a sports village, rejuvenating a whole area of the city and providing new rail and tram links to HS2, so money is clearly no object. He insists revenues are through the roof at a sold-out St Andrew’s and FFP/PSR simply isn’t a concern. Still, you do have to think this lot probably need to go up again reasonably quickly.

Their first challenge is some of the opposition they face this season will at least make an attempt to beat them. The majority of their games last year, particularly at home, were played against teams straight batting a flat back ten, in the deepest, tightest low block they could possibly execute, to try and get a 0-0 draw or simply avoid a ritual humiliation. Some Championship teams will do that against them, but not all. They start with Ipswich Town at home, an interesting test case right away this Friday night.

The second is patience and expectation. Wagner, Brady and co expect Premier League football. They’re ambitious, they don’t care who knows it, they’re not here to make friends and they’re not in this for league games at home to Preston North End. They’re here for trophies, Premier League, Europe, American tours, 60,000 seater stadium, sport village… How quickly? We’ll see. Would they be happy to consolidate this year, build next, and then go up in year three? Is two years okay? Or does it have to be this year? And if it does have to be this year, when Ipswich, Southampton and Leicester all bring back squads well capable of smashing this division apart, then what happens if there is a bit of a rocky start, or a dip in form, or four losses on the bounce at one stage? How much of this buying into Chris Davies and his style and his project is real, how much of it is lip service? Davies is intense, and driven, in the mould of Brendan Rodgers who he assisted for so long, but how secure is he if Birmingham are tenth going into January? If Danny Rohl is still available? Will that starfucker itch need to be scratched with a Steven Gerrard type (Villa connection not withstanding)?

The third is the sort of player they’re signing. Japanese striker Kyogo Furuhashi scored a goal every five minutes for Celtic but absolutely bombed in a proper league at Rennes after a big money move, is 30 now and Celtic play Kilmarnock every other week. £8m? Feels punchy, though Brum have certainly played the Asian market very well of late. Likewise, Chuba Akpom, the man with the best agent in football who continues to live off six good months at Middlesbrough. Or Demarai Gray, who’s spent the last two years pisballing about getting fat and rich in Saudi Arabia.

A lot of the other incomings look very good, though. Our own Bright Osayi-Samuel is back at the ground he scored one of his most spectacular QPR goals - I hear you’re a right back now father? Ex-Derby Eiran Cashin an excellent pick up at centre back, likewise Tommy Doyle from Wolves at CM and Kanya Fujimoto at ‘ten’. Like Wrexham, another promoted team focusing their summer business on making sure they’re strong right down the spine of their team for the higher level. There was already significant quality through the middle anyway with classy centre back Christoph Clarer, midfield pair Tomoki Iwata and Paik Seung-Ho, and the hard working, expensive acquisition Jay Stansfield in attack. You only had to watch them play Newcastle in the FA Cup last season to see how close they are to that level already, albeit only on a one-off basis for now. On the other hand, Lyndon Dykes is still here.

Look, you’re not going to like this lot. If you get all the way through that documentary you’re a better man than me. The Birmingham fans aren’t shy of dick swinging when they think they’ve got a dick to swing, and there’s the pent up anger and emotion of a decade in footballing purgatory under Carson Yeung’s ownership coiled up and ready to blow. Tom Wagner holding up Peterborough’s trophy presentation at the Freight Rover Trophy final so he could give his team a performative, public, finger wagging speech on the Wembley balcony had the rest of the footballing world universally shouting “fuck off, mate” as one. Difficult to see a world where they’re not a significant threat though. Their season ticket applications were oversubscribed to the tune of 12,000 people.

Manager: Chris Davies Not many Northamptons and Cambridge Uniteds kicking around at this level, the real work starts now.

Oppo View – Matt Elliott, We Are Birmingham Podcast, @matthewblue1975 “When we got relegated the general feeling for many fans was that this was a much needed reset. Knighthead have made sweeping changes across the board. They got very busy in that transfer market – 16 in and 16 out and more in January. They built a squad of Championship quality in League One. So there was a lot of expectation… but it was awesome. It did feel like we were cheating on Football Manager for a while, some of the fees have been overblown by the media but let’s be honest we spent more than the rest of the league put together.

“If it does come together, yes we’ll be in the play-offs. We have to be top six with the squad we’re building.”

Listen to the full interview with Matt on our Patreon season preview show.

Prediction – 4th (@AnalyticsQPR – 6th) They’re going to be insufferable, but they’re going to be good.

Sheff Utd 8/1

Last Season: 3rd (we said 10th, +7) We spent this preview last year looking for reasons to knock Sheff Utd as low down our predicted league table as we could get them. The Blades had endured a torrid Premier League season, and had needed to be promoted in the first place to avoid a financial collapse – their first act in the transfer window in preparation for the top flight was to offload their two best players. This felt like a bit of a basket case club, and we never like to just lazily predict the three relegated teams will go straight back up if we can help it. Points deduction into the bargain as well – albeit only a couple.

There were a couple of flaws in this thinking. Sadly, that gap between Premier League and Championship is getting bigger not smaller. Watching Brentford’s land of the giants XI rampage around Loftus Road on Saturday really brought home just how athletic and physical that league has become in our absence. It was like watching Space Jam, Brentford’s MonStars against Bugs Bunny and Bill Murray in hoops. Sheff Utd, despite their rancid 23/24, were a substantially better team than we gave them credit for. We were also, as ever, writing the preview with a month of transfer window left and in that transfer window they suddenly added a whole load of Michael Cooper, Harry Souttar, Jesurun Rak-Sakyi, Alfie Gilchrist types who weren’t there when we put fingers to keys.

What transpired was a 92-point season that didn’t end in promotion. Quite a difficult trick to pull off. Their resources relative to much of the rest of the division exemplified by Wilder describing his squad as “down to the bear bones” after a 3-0 home loss to Hull in which he brought Rak-Sakyi, Souza, Brewster and Campbell off the bench. They went toe to toe and stride for stride with Leeds and Burnley, who both ended up with 100 points apiece, for 95% of the year, but when the pace being set is that red hot you can’t afford a slip and a weird week in April where they contrived to lose to Millwall, Oxford and Plymouth back-to-back condemned them to the play offs where the Blades have more failures on their slate than any other side (ten and counting).

The end-of-season knockout mirrored much of what had gone before. For all of a semi-final with Bristol City, largely ended as a contest by the classic Rob Dickie-reach-around red card in the first leg, and the final against a Sunderland side they’d finished one place but 14 points ahead of, they were very much in control and looking good for victory. Watching the Wembley final in Milan we were faced with a choice of grabbing a meal before going to watch AC play, or staying for the final 15 minutes of a game that felt over to us even at just 1-0. We went for pizza, and the rest is history. A quarter of an hour later it was Sunderland in the Premier League chucking millions about, and Sheff Utd still in this league and sacking Chris Wilder for a second time.

Ins >>> Ehije Ukaki, 20, RW, Botev Plovdiv, £500k >>> Mihail Polendakov, 18, RB, Septemvri Sofia, £500k >>> Louie Barry, 22, LW, Villa, Loan >>> Tyler Bindon, 20, CB, Forest, Loan

Outs >>> Vini Souza, 26, DM, Wolfsburg, £14m >>> Rhian Brewster, 25, CF, Derby, Free

This Season: Despite that 92-point haul, it seems the new hierarchy in the Bramall Lane boardroom felt it was time for a change. You don’t get much more of a change than swapping out “oooh I’m dead northern me, I come in through t’front door and say what I think” Chris Wilder and modern trendy Ruben Selles who was very harshly dealt with by Hull after keeping them up last season.

The clues that was coming if promotion wasn’t achieved were there for all to see at the end of January. As ever, Wilder was extremely active in that middle window, spending lots of money on lots of people you’ve heard of - £10m on Tom Cannon, not a success so far, Hamza Choudhury, Rob Holding, Ben Brereton-Diaz, Harry Clarke all in on costly loans. But then, right at the end, Jefferson Caceres, a 22-year-old left winger from FBC Melgar in Peru, and Christian Nwachukwu, a 19-year-old left winger from Botev Plovdiv in the Bulgarian second division. Not exactly your archetypal Chris Wilder signings, and lo not a single sub appearance between them from January to the end of the campaign.

Sheff Utd’s new owners are apparently keen to pursue a recruitment operation based around AI. This is probably a horrifically lazy broad brushstroke which does not do justice to what’s actually going on there, but I’m putting it up as a red flag anyway. Louie Barry is here from Aston Villa which is a conventional pick up and a good looking addition, but they’ve been back to Botev Plovdiv for 20-year-old right winger Ehije Ukaki and 19-year-old right back Mihail Polendakov is also here from fellow Bulgarian outfit Septemvri Sofia. Hmmmmm.

As we’ve said with QPR this summer, if you dismiss a popular manager doing a decent job (and Wilder was undoubtedly both of those things) then that does put you under a certain amount of pressure to do better the following year.

Cynicism and scepticism about this sharp change in direction is offset slightly by a squad that really should be among the six best in the division, even allowing for the mass exodus of last season’s loans. Gus Hamer so far remains, and won out from a three-man shortlist for divisional player of the year. Backed up by Callum O’Hare, fronted up by Tom Cannon, Tyrese Campbell. Kieffer Moore is a loss to Wrexham, Cannon is yet to fire (sorry), but it’s not a bad line-up is it? And there’ll be more to come.

Ollie Arblaster returns from injury in a home-grown midfield with Sydie Peck but Vini Souza is a big loss – albeit one providing £15m in funds to strengthen. Harrison Burrows had a great first season at this level down the left. Anel Ahmedhodžić is still here. Michael Cooper is linked with West Ham among others, but is the division’s best goalkeeper if he sticks around. York and Rotherham have been beaten 6-2 and 5-0 in pre-season.

Could be vulnerable, but even a drop off of 20 points would still have placed them in the top six last season so I’m sticking with for now.

Manager: Ruben Selles Such a stark change from Chris Wilder there might be some minor women’s whiplash to recover from through the early weeks.

Oppo View - @BeatlyOli Sheff Utd Way Podcast “It was a very familiar feeling to the end of United’s 24/25 season - ten times we’ve entered the play offs, ten times we have failed and looked back on what could have been. This was arguably more brutal than past suffering what with VAR deciding to rear its ugly head for the first and only time of a 49-game season…

“I think we’ll be worse than last season without being a disaster. My current thoughts on promotion are that we have a clear top two (Ipswich & Southampton) we have two high ceiling medium floor teams who may be aiming for automatics (Leicester & Birmingham) and then we have the consistent play-off teams - who I see as being United, Coventry and Norwich. Sticking my neck out I’ve got us third above Birmingham and with Leicester out in the cold…”

Prediction – 5th (@AnalyticsQPR – 4th) A lot of warning signs here for me, but if that squad isn’t in the play-offs again then something’s gone badly wrong somewhere.

Frank Lampard’s Coventry 11/1

Last Season: 5th (we said 4th, -1) Somebody, somewhere, really hates this lot.

They’ve already had to fight their way back to this level from the bottom division once, having crashed through all four leagues amidst two decades of gross mismanagement and Mickey Adams football. They’ve played home games at both Northampton and Birmingham while their out of town monstrosity was commandeered as a rugby stadium/Commonwealth Games venue/Monster Truck track. They’ve overcome bankruptcy, administration and malignant hedge fund ownership. And having done all that you’d think even the staunchest supporter of whoever it is that really are Coventry’s main rivals wouldn’t begrudge them being thrown a bone or two.

Instead, no. How about a another punch to the face, as punishment for daring to hope? They reached a Wembley play-off final in 2023 and felt the more likely of the two redemption arc stories to win through that day and go back to the Premier League for the first time since 2001, but Fankaty Dabo put their sixth penalty of the shoot out over the bar and that was the end of that. A year later they were back at the national stadium for a first FA Cup semi-final since they won the thing in 1987. Trailing 3-0 to Manchester United, Mark Robins’ side staged an extraordinary fightback which culminated in a glorious winning goal scored with a minute to go in extra time. VAR pulled it back for a misplaced toenail in back play.

Personally, I’d never have gone to football again. What’s the fucking point? Your 3-0 down to Man Utd at Wembley, you get it back to 3-3, you score a perfectly legitimate winner, and some walloper with a laptop gets the Microsoft Paint out and starts drawing lines through your dreams. Get in the sea. You can follow that sport if you like, I’ll be over here with my book. But, back Coventry came again, and after a typically sluggish start to 24/25 which culminated in the controversial dismissal of legendary manager Robins, they staged exactly the sort of hot run through the second half of the campaign under Frank Lampard we’ve come to expect of this club in recent times and made the play-offs once more. Right, surely this time?

In the first leg at home to Sunderland a 1-1 draw was turned into a 2-1 defeat in the very last minute by an errant back pass from one of the team’s stand out performers Milan van Ewijk. That needn’t have mattered when they dominated much of the second leg at the Stadium of Light and got their deserved aggregate equaliser through Ephron Mason-Clark with 14 minutes left. A win for Sunderland, who hadn’t finished the season well and seemed to be choking in front of a giant home crowd, felt a distant third possibility behind Coventry finishing the job or a penalty shoot out. Then Dan Ballard headed a corner in off the crossbar in the very last second of extra time and Coventry were left to face another summer of what might have been.

Oh, you like a kick to the bollocks do you? Well, here’s ALL THE KICKS TO THE BOLLOCKS IN THE WORLD.

Ins >>> Kaine Kesley-Hayden, 22, RB, Villa, £3.5m >>> Miguel Angel Brau, 23, LB, Granada, Free >>> Carl Rushworth, 24, GK, Brighton, Loan

Outs >>> Luis Binks, 23, CB, Brondby, £2,5m >>> Jamie Paterson, 33, AM, Plymouth, Free >>> Jack Burroughs, 24, RB, Northampton, Free >>> Fabio Tavares, 24, CF, Burton, Free >>> Ryan Howley, 21, CM, Bristol Rovers, Free >>> Cian Tyler, 23, GK, Released

This Season: It is entirely possible that there’s literally some bloody witchcraft going on here. Barry Fry would have been pissing in the corners of the pitch, Ian Holloway would have had Kim down the training ground wafting her woowoo stick around long before now. Their propensity to lose through a combination of penalty shoot-outs and goals with the last kick of the game is becoming spooky, and really takes some getting over – Cov won four of their first 18 league games last season, three of their first 16 the year before and one of the first ten in 2022/23.

These heartbreaks surely cannot continue indefinitely. This feels like a club going places. They’ve not only been able to trade their way into a strong PSR/FFP position by selling the likes of Gyokeres and Hamer, but have also been able to ride out the loss of those players, and Callum O’Hare on a free, without significant damage to their team. The ‘game’s gone’ hard nosed decision to part company with Robins could have holed last season below the waterline, people derided the decision to go with the previously failed Frank Lampard, but he brought former Millwall manager and Chelsea coach Joe Edwards with him and at one stage won nine of ten games. Cov won 16 of 29 games under him, 52 pointsin that period bettered only by Leeds and Burnley. Season ticket sales have had to be caped at 24,000, and those locals have done a great job in turning one of the worst examples of new stadia design in this country into a proper cauldron.

Mel Johnson’s son runs an old world meets new world recruitment operation here that is firing on all cylinders. Matt Grimes was an inspired addition from Swansea last January and forms a lovely midfield with Ben Sheaf and/or Victor Torp.. They continue to sign really, really well. Goalkeeper looked a bit of a problem spot with Oliver Dovin injured and neither Ben Wilson nor Bradley Collins greatly inspiring, but Carl Rushworth has been secured from Brighton after a great spell in this league with Swansea. Kaine Kesler-Hayden was Preston’s player of the year on loan from Aston Villa and has been picked up for a slim £3.5m – offsetting the potential loss of van Ewijk to Fulham, or creating a hell of a right side if he sticks around. This continues a recent theme - Rushworth was Swansea’s best player in 23/24, Grimes was in 24/25, Kesler-Hayden was Preston’s best player last year, Jack Rudoni was Huddersfield’s best player – Cov keep picking the outstanding player from rival teams, and they’re not breaking the bank doing it. A chunky Gyokeres sell-on fee may be heading their way, although there is some vague suggestion they may have already sold that back to Sporting to pay for last summer’s refit.

There’s probably still work to do at centre back to pair Jimmy Dunne-a-like Bobby Thomas with something more cultured now Luis Binks has left, and at left back where Jake Bidwell is still hanging around and Jay Da Silva can be targeted for a lack of height. But the quality of this team, and how far they’ve risen, can be seen in a forward line of Josh Simms, Brandon Thomas-Asante, Hadji Wright, Norman Bassette, and the latest star off the Peterborough pipeline Ephron Mason-Clark, which the Cov fans aren’t happy with and say needs strengthening. They should come and watch Zan Celar try and locate his own arse for a bit.

Coventry have gone agonisingly close before, despite those lousy runs at the start of every season. Start strong and with a more settled squad, momentum behind them, a couple of shrewd signings already and surely more to come, money to spend, a smart owner, a full stadium… if it’s not this year then you best start believing in ghost stories Miss Turner, you’re in one.

Manager: Frank Lampard No, but seriously.

Oppo View – Dominic Jerrams @SideSammy “I think last year has to be viewed as a successful one, even if it ended losing so agonisingly having probably been the better ream over two legs against a Sunderland side now in the Prem and chucking millions around. It was a different kind of achievement to when we last made the play-offs. Then, it felt like a high water mark, this time it feels like we had a top six quality squad who achieved par. Losing didn’t quite hurt in the same way as it feels like there is more road to run, rather than reaching the end of one.

“We are clearly trying our hardest to get to the Premier League, however, the sad truth is that if the majority of the parachute teams even remotely have their acts together, our (or anyone’s) hope of getting back to the Prem is down to the lottery of the play-offs. It’s hard to say anything more than ‘I think we’re good enough to make the top six’ rather than predict what might happen over two legs and Wembley.

Prediction – 3rd (@AnaltyicsQPR – 2nd) Most likely to challenge the parachute payment clubs.

Leicester 12/1

Last Season: 18th in Prem Bit of a joke, really, for a club of this size and support that was winning the Premier League and FA Cup and competing in Europe at various points of the last ten years. Now two relegations in three years, a rapidly rotating cast of disparate managers, £200m+ in financial losses and FFP issues pouring out of every orifice.

The Foxes really needed to go up, stay up, start cutting some cloth and banking some money. Calm down, basically. The team they went up with won the Championship with 97 points scoring 89 goals and should have been more than good enough to achieve a fourth bottom finish. Steve Cooper replaced Chelsea-bound Enzo Maresca and be it the style of football, the Nottingham Forest connection, or the wizard sleeve face never felt a good fit or a harmonious connection with the support base. The Foxes were, however, outside the bottom three when he was sacked having made the best start of the three promoted clubs – draws with Palace, Spurs and Everton, wins against Bournemouth and Southampton.

A slightly rash decision, therefore, particularly as there didn’t seem to be any succession planning in place whatsoever. This wasn’t like Bournemouth dismissing Gary O’Neil while parring the course because they wanted to bring in Iraola and progress, this was “sorry Steve, but you’ve got a face like the wrong end of a cow and we don’t like you so bye” and then “right, what’s next?” What’s next was Ruud van Nistelrooy and, prepare to flabber your gast, this turned out to be a bit of a disaster.

The Foxes lost seven league games in a row over Christmas – a sequence interrupted only by our farcical fog-bound cup tie there in January. A big missed opportunity for QPR that one, a rare misstep from Marti Cifuentes that pissed a lot of supporters off, and really quite embarrassing for all concerned given that either side of that game Leicester lost nine consecutive home games without scoring a single goal. Playing the other two hopeless promoted sides did enable them to finish with two home victories but between December 3 and April 26 they won one Premier League game (Spurs away, of course) out of 20 played and lost 17 of those.

That’s not good enough anyway, to put it mildly, but certainly not for the quality of player they took up with them. I’m not saying this lot should have been pushing Europe, or either midtable, but one win in 20 games, nine home games without a goal, 17 defeats in 20 attempts? Come on. It’s not like they didn’t spent another considerable wedge achieving this either. Another thick end of £90m went out the door here over the last two transfer windows - £20m on Niles Crane from Spurs, £20m on Bilal El Khannouss, £16m on Issahaku Fatawu, £14m on Caleb Okoli. Only £45m recouped in sales, mainly Kiernan Dewsbury Hall going to Chelsea reserves.

A disaster, really. From one of the sport's best run clubs to one of its worst.

Ins >>> Asmir Begovic, 38, GK, Everton, Free

Outs >>> Conor Coady, 32, CB, Wrexham, £2m >>> Daniel Iversen, 27, GK, Preston, Free >>> Danny Ward, 32, GK, Wrexham, Free >>> Jamie Vardy, 38, CF, Released

This Season: The team Leicester bring back should form the top three, along with the teams Ipswich and Southampton are bringing back, such is the sick and twisted world of Championship football we now exist in.

Look who’s still here, for goodness’ sake. Mads Hermansen in goal, giant Harry Souttar at the back a Championship cheat code, Jannick Vestergaard, Wout Faes, Wilfred Ndidi, Harry Winks, Oli Skipp, El Khannouss, Choudhury, Fatawu who was fantastic at this level before but injured for most of last year, Mavididi, Ayew. Jeremy Monga has already played Premier League football aged just 15. This lot are playing Sheffield Wednesday on Saturday, they’ll tear them a new arse the size of the Blackwall Tunnel. They haven’t made signings yet but the first serious addition through the door is said to be Burnley midfielder Josh Brownhill who was a machine at this level last year – 18 goals in 39 starts from central midfield. If this lot stay together that’s a title winning team.

Marti Cifuentes, one of the division’s most promising coaching talents, is rewarded for his fine work at QPR with a big job at a parachute payment club. And while we’ve gone hot and heavy for Ipswich and Southampton, here we are being cool on the team that finished ahead of both of them – 13 points better off than Saints in last season’s Prem.

However… there is a substantial list of ‘howevers’ here which is reflected in the 12/1 price generally available for them to win the league. The first is the looming threat of a points deduction, whenever the EFL get round to it (season starts on Saturday lads, no rush), which has been tipped as high as 12 and likely to be around nine. That needn’t be a hole below the waterline for a squad as stacked as this. Had Burnley and Leeds been deducted nine points last year, both would still have been automatically promoted. The other relegated side, Sheff Utd, finished 14 points clear of fourth. The gap between Premier League and Championship, between haves and have nots, in this like is now a yawning chasm. Nine points is nothing, really.

The second, though, is how many of those players will remain come the end of August? The financial situation here necessitates multiple sales. A lot of those names listed above are surely going to be tossed as they try to recoup their enormous losses, cut a colossal wage bill, and start complying with financial rules they’ve long been totally ignoring. Conor Coady and Jamie Vardy lead that exodus, goalkeeper Hermansen seems certain to follow this week before the big kick off. There will surely, surely be more. Many more. Lots of these players don’t want to be here, and the club can’t afford to keep them anyway. If it’s not tied down, expect it to be going overboard at some point. The team on paper at the moment is a 100 goals and 100 points team, will it still look like that on September 1 when the summer is over, the Championship is in full swing, and they’re potentially bottom of the league on -3 points? It feels a little bit like Chris Ramsey’s QPR.

There are other, less tangible, things around mood, vibes and momentum. What has last season done to Leicester, mentally? This is a question we’ve asked of Southampton too. Do you just lose every game you play for six months, conceding four goals each time in the process, and then just land on both wheels in August, pull over at the side of the track and ask what everybody was worried about?

This is a mismanaged club, no question. It’s been overspending and rule breaking for years. That finally seems to be catching up with them. The only addition so far, laughably, is Big Pink Paradise Asmir Begovic, whose dire mistake in QPR’s 2-1 win on this ground two seasons ago was one of several fundamental errors he was making 18 months ago. Does he strike you as being in better shape with another year of sitting around on his sizeable arse in the meantime? Leicester have recruited prolifically for years under director of football Jon Rudkin and most of the intake has been bloody awful. No signs of that improving so far this summer, or anybody being held accountable for those lamentable failures.

And what mood are the supporters in? They didn’t seem overly thrilled with Enzo Maresca’s football while he was accumulating 98 points and winning the league – a Leicester podcast we were on that season described it as “as low as I’ve ever felt about Leicester and football in general”. Marti Cifuentes is a shrewd appointment as a firefighter – he goes into very difficult situations, turns them around quickly, then falls out with everybody and leaves in year two. That is what Leicester need right now, and two years of Championship experience will help, but is a support that’s experienced trophy lifts, Wembley finals and European midweeks very recently be able to adjust its sights to a season of firefighting in the Championship? Will Cifuentes get the support and buy in he enjoyed at Loftus Road, or will the locals wonder who this nobody from QPR is? It feels like patience with their club is pretty thin on the ground in these parts – justifiably so.

Manager: Marti Cifuentes Paella, Estrella, gardening tips.

Oppo View – Ian Gallagher (@IanGallagher82) “Last season went wrong for many reasons. We lost our manager and best player in Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall before the start of the season, then invested woefully in areas we didn't need to strengthen in (£20m for Oliver Skipp to sit on the bench, or a three-year contract for 32-year-old Bobby Decordova-Reid, anyone?). We were facing plenty of PSR pressures as it was, so we could ill afford to waste money on poor recruits. Arguably we started the year with a worse team than the one which got us promoted, so we were just woefully ill-equipped to survive at Premier League level - whether that was under Steve Cooper, Ruud van Nistelrooy or whoever.

“The mood veers from the usual blind pre-season optimism which afflicts most football fans, to somewhere in the middle ground. I think we should be OK, because we have loads of players in the squad who are proven at the sharp end of the Championship. Equally, the inevitable points deduction plus a bad run of form could quickly send us into a spiral which it's hard to escape from. Plus, we wrote the book on ridiculous relegations in 2023. So in short - promotion, mid-table obscurity and relegation all feel possible!”

Prediction – 8th (@AnalyticsQPR – 8th) A title winning team surrounded by an Eastenders Christmas special.

Norwich 16/1

Last Season: 13th (we said 8th, -5) It was really difficult to tell at Loftus Road last season who Norwich City hated more – us, the referee, or themselves.

A thoroughly odd performance, littered with internal arguments between teammates and needless moments of agg for which Kenny McLean eventually copped a second retrospective four-game ban of his season, ended in a 3-0 victory for QPR. At Carrow Road later the same month Rangers were a minute away from a double until Marcelino Nunez whopped one in from range with the last kick of normal time.

A squad with undoubtedly talented individuals, but a disparate collection of players assembled under two different ownerships, two different directors of football and four different managers. After a period of stability under Daniel Farke this is club that has rattled through contrasting spells with Dean Smith, David Wagner and Johannes Hoff Thorup in relatively quick time. Their recruitment strategy has flip flopped from continental to domestic, from young to old and back again. In 2022/23 their headline incomings were Nunez, Gabriel Sara and Marquinhos, a year later it was Ashley Barnes, Shane Duffy and Danny Batth, last summer it was Ante Crnac, Matej Jurasek and Amankway Forson and an average age of just 21. Hoff Thorup wanted possession, David Wagner didn’t, Dean Smith wanted to put the ball in the channels, Daniel Farke wanted to dominate. This is incoherent. It’s been incoherent for a while. And as Rayan Kolli tormented walkabout goalkeeper Angus Gunn in the West London rain the results were there for all to see – they seemed to hate each other.

Hoff Thorup was supposed to be the long-term project for new sporting director Ben Knapper but the Canaries decided to eject out of that after just one year. Harsh, perhaps, with all of what had gone before considered, a clearly fractured dressing room to deal with, and the spectre of Jack Wilshere hanging round in the background openly touting for the job. But then Norwich spent the thick end of £30m on players last summer (offset by £40m in sales) and if you’re finishing one point and one place above QPR with Borja Sainz and Josh Sargent in your team then either you’re doing a shit job or the bloke at Loftus Road is doing very well.

City were a fun watch and scored a lot of goals when it went well (only Leeds bagged more) but that didn’t happen often enough and they were too easy to play against and through when it didn’t click. Perhaps more importantly they were showing no signs of improvement at all – two wins from the final 12 games, three from the last 16. When you’ve got arguably the division’s best striker, and best attacking ‘ten’, and your chucking out numbers like that while sitting 13th, you can see why the board got a little bit jumpy.

Ins >>> Mathias Kvistgaarden, 23, CF, Brondby, £7m >>> Papa Amadou Diallo, 21, LW, Metz, £4m >>> Jacob Wright, 19, CM, Man City, £2.5m >>> Vladan Kovačević, 27, GK, Sporting, £2m >>> Jakov Medic, 26, CB, Ajax, £2m >>> Harry Darling, 25, CB, Swansea, Free >>> Jeffrey Schlupp, 32, LM, Palace, Free >>> Louie Moulden, 23, GK, Palace, Free >>> Dan Grimshaw, 27, GK, Plymouth, Undisclosed

Outs >>> Jonathan Rowe, 22, LW, Marseille, £12m >>> Borja Sainz, 24, AM, Porto, £12m >>> Jacob Lungi Sorensen, 27, DM, Brann, Free >>> Vicente Reyes 21, GK, Peterborough, Loan >>> Angus Gunn, 29, GK, Glue Factory, Free >>> Onel Hernandez, 32, LW, Released >>> Archie Mair, 24, GK, Released

This Season: Local boy Liam Manning has been poached from the Bristol City side he did extremely well to wrestle into sixth position last year before they rather crashed and burned in the play-off semi-final against an obviously superior Sheff Utd side. Manning’s reputation continues to grow despite his football, while clearly effective, being rather staid and boring at times. He’s done well at MK Dons, Oxford and Bristol City but never actually seen a promotion through with any of them. Wilshere, having been overlooked, has moved on so there won’t be that awkwardness there again.

He'll have a war chest to work with at Carrow Road. Norwich are extremely adept at selling players, keeping them far out of the reaches of FFP and providing funds plural to go out and strengthen their team each summer. Jonathan Rowe and Borja Sainz have fetched in north of £25m already this summer and Josh Sargent will take that past £40m if interest from Wolfsburg and elsewhere comes to fruition. If not, City have got one of the division’s best strikers when he’s fit and they’ve already added Mathias Kvistgaarden after 41 goals in72 starts and 39 sub appearances for Brondby (Frankfurt, Celtic, Rennes and West Ham all reportedly keen). Idah, Sara and Kamara’s sales last summer raked in £40m, Omobamidele, Aarons, Raschica and Mumba £25m the year before – this is the sort of player trading model Christian Nourry dreams of at QPR, it’s transformative to your budget and prospects.

QPR fans certainly don’t need telling, but if you needed an indication of just how poor Gunn was between the sticks for this lot last season then they’ve gone out this summer and signed three different goalkeepers (three goalkeepers, Jeremy?) of which you’d expect Vladan Kovačević is going to be number one despite a very rickety spell at Sporting who had paid £5m for him after a trophy-laden spell in Bosnia.

Swansea’s ball-playing centre back Harry Darling won’t win many aerial duels but did suit Manning’s style well (certainly a lot more than the frequently drunk Shane Duffy) when they were together at MK Dons and won’t need to win any headers anyway with This Enormous Centre Back Will Devour Us All Jakov Medic alongside him from Ajax. Man City starlet Jacob Wright looks a bit of a steal at just £2.5m. Youngster Kellen Fisher and experienced Jack Stacey are a nice pair of full backs down either side for this level.

It’s certainly a massively bloated squad with a month of the window left (five goalkeepers, six central defenders and nine midfielders) but American owner Mark Attanasio has completed a full takeover from the Delia Smith dynasty and after a period of stagnation in front of an increasingly restless crowd he doesn’t feel like he’s in the mood to hang around. If Sargent stays and stays fit and/or Kvistgaarden turns out to be Teemu Pukki rather than Ricky Van Wolfswinkel then there’s a lot to like here.

They significantly underperformed last year and could easily put on half a dozen places or more.

Manager: Liam Manning Boring but effective.

Oppo View – Connor Southwell (@cjsouthwell1902) “In a word, last season was weird. Transfer requests, injuries galore, disciplinary issues but also some intoxicating victories that saw Norwich dispatch opponents playing superb football. They were either excellent or abysmal. Slick or stodgy. Only Leeds scored more but only five conceded more, including the three relegated sides. They didn’t spend a single day inside the top six and were the worst team in the Championship for the final two months. Throw in a managerial change, Jack Wilshere as an interim and a full takeover by an American group and you begin to get to the heart of what made it so odd and frantic. In the end, that wild inconsistency saw them finish 13th. However you cut it, under par for Norwich, especially with Borja Sainz and Josh Sargent forming key parts of your attack and considering the money invested I talent. Ultimately, there was too much risk for too little reward in their strategy. That is what they’ve sought to address this summer.

“This is a Norwich group with a high ceiling. If it clicks, then they could be a very strong team in this league – but a lot would need to go their way for that outcome to become a reality. Equally, last season displayed that their floor is low. A 13th-place finish probably flattered them in the end, but it’s hard to see a world where Manning doesn’t make them at least more defensively solid. I could see progress – but in a strong league, the top six may just evade them. Eighth.”

Oppo View – Phil Harris “Last season was a right mixed bag. Johannes Hoff Thorup was brought in as the anti-David Wagner with the express aim of coaching players to love the ball and always play (ahem) the right way. Unfortunately, it didn’t really work out like that, despite a bizarre goal-filled campaign which saw only Leeds United score more times throughout the season. An abysmal defensive record that placed us 19th on goals conceded put paid to any hopes of a push for the play-offs. A commitment to bringing in young players was admirable, but few of the signings really clicked, and in much the same way that it was almost impossible to discern anything approaching a plan under previous head coaches Wagner and Dean Smith, it once again felt that players were either unsure of the task presented to them or were simply unable to follow instructions.

“Our bitter rivals were doubtless burned by the experience last season. I genuinely sympathised with their plight (a little bit) and it all now feels sort of impossible to be honest. But hey, at least we can now renew rivalries with our nearest and dearest and try to keep our 16-year unbeaten run against them on our way to a more encouraging but ultimately not-quite-there eighth place finish.”

Prediction – 7th (@AnalyticsQPR -5th) I think there’s a pretty set top five this year and then beyond that a collection of clubs that could take the sixth spot, of which Norwich are one of the best bets.

West Brom 20/1

Last Season: 9th (we said 6th, -3) There were some serious misses in our preview last summer, of which one we’ll muse on shortly, but one we called absolutely spot on was West Bromwich Albion. This was a team that should finish between tenth and 12th, but it’s got the best manager in the league and therefore it’ll finish sixth. Sixth is exactly where the Baggies were when Carlos Corberan was finally picked off by Valencia on Christmas Day, the decision to replace him with their former title winner Tony Mowbray after his cancer treatment was romantic but they wasted absolutely no time in reverting to type with one win in the next seven games and, after another run of two wins in 11 (no prizes for guessing who one of those was against), Mowbray didn’t even see out the year.

The problems here are really quite similar to our own.

The first is that West Brom have a good starting 11 on paper, but very little beyond it by way of depth (particularly up front and in the full back positions) so injuries tend to bite into them really hard – and they get A LOT of injuries. There aren’t many more fearsome strikeforces in Championship football than Josh Maja and Daryl Dike, but Maja hasn’t played since January 4 at which point he had 12 goals in 26 appearances including an opening day hat trick at Loftus Road, and Dike has only made 18 starts in three and a half years since an £8m move here thanks to a series of nasty Achilles blow outs (the American has completed 90 minutges just three times in two years).

The second is that their pragmatic and practical Spanish manager had them set up with an effective midfield midblock which meant they didn’t get beaten very much, but equally weren’t particularly brilliant to watch and didn’t win often off. Only Preston (20) drew more than West Brom’s 19 last year and at one point through October to December they went unbeaten in 12 games while only winning twice. Partly I guess that’s because they struggle to ever get their first choice attack on the pitch, they failed to score in five of those dozen games, but it’s also because, like us, as soon as they open up and try to attack teams they tend to get picked off. Mowbray, famously, likes a more open and attacking style of play, but West Brom lost five of 11 after his appointment having only lost three all season in the league to that point.

Stuck five through Luton and relegated them while having nothing to play for on the final day, which is ostensibly hilarious.

Ins >>> Aune Heggebø, 23, CF, Brann, £5m >>> Nat Phillips, 28, CB, Liverpool, £3m >>> George Campbell, 24, CB, Montreal, £1m

Outs >>> John Swift, 30, AM, Portsmouth, Free >>> Semi Ajayi, 31, CB, Hull, Free >>> Ted Cann, 24, GK, Rotherham, Free >>> Grady Diangana, 27, RW, Released

This Season: Prior to the 2021/22 season when the Baggies finished tenth in this league, they had a 20 year period of success in which they never once finished lower than sixth in the Championship and spent 13 seasons in the top flight. This is a support base who protested a lack of ambition from then owner Jeremy Peace while Dan Ashworth was the director of football here and they were a consolidated Premier League team, so to slide back into the mid-table Championship side they were back in the 1990s, with finishes of 10th, 9th, 5th and 9th again over the last four seasons, is a bit of a comedown – last year was their lowest points total at this level since 2000.

What they also have in common with QPR, however, is a tight FFP/PSR situation after a period of mismanagement by foreign ownership.

New owner Shilen Patel seems to have his head screwed on, and is running the club well, but Guochuan Lai had got this lot into such an almighty state, where he was actually taking money out of the club to prop up his other Covid-afflicted businesses, that it’s going to take some untangling. This summer, once again, has been more about removing expensive mistakes of the past – John Swift and Grady Diangana have been released – than significantly adding to the squad. Like us they’re stuck in a situation where only jumbo player sales will get them out of this frustrating stagnation. Dara O’Shea to Burnley for £7m was a reasonable start, but since then only £2.5m apiece for Brandon Thomas-Asante and Alex Palmer, and nothing incoming so far this summer. Josh Maja would count as a sellable asset but has a history of winding his deal down and is indeed out of contract next year, along with Dike.

With that in mind I thought the controversial link to Marti Cifuentes in April made perfect sense and would have been a great fit. A very similar manager to Corberan in every way from nationality upwards, he could have come into this dressing room and continued the work his countryman had been doing, the shape he was using, the style of play he executed, really without missing a beat and without major additions in a way Moany Towbray wasn’t able. Instead, perhaps put off by the complicated situation that link landed Cifuentes in at Loftus Road, they’re the ones to take a chance on Spurs coach Ryan Mason who was super highly thought of in North London and not a million miles away from getting the job there for real 18 months ago.

The question now comes back to what happened last season. What type of manager is Ryan Mason? Does he want fast, open, expansive, attacking football? Or is he going to sit in, straight bat, midblock, stodge the midfield, keep it tight, lots of draws, lots of single goal wins? If it’s the former, this squad to this point has shown itself incapable of executing that. Teething problems perhaps hinted at by a 4-2 loss at Lincoln and a 2-1 defeat to Blackpool in pre-season.

Additions so far, if not quite non-existent, have certainly been thin on the ground. Having enjoyed great success with giant left sided defender Torbjorn Heggem last summer they’ve returned to Norwich for Brann striker Aune Heggebø (29 goals in 53 starts and 49 sub apps). Add that to (in theory) Maja, Dike, Karlan Grant and Devante Cole and that’s a collection of strikers that makes our lot look absolutely laughable. You’ll be fine in the Championship with that forward line. But apart from that it’s Nat Phillips at centre back from Liverpool and nothing else. The full back spots, where Darnell Furlong is increasingly unpopular and Callum Styles is not a left back, have not been addressed and neither player has any cover.

They’re perhaps waiting for interest from Everton, or others, in excellent assist machine Tom Fellows to firm up, freeing headroom for a spending spree. But when this cautious, defensive team did go forwards over the last 18 months it tended to be primarily through Fellows (top assister in the league last year, 14, along with Pompey’s Josh Murphy) and Celtic winger Micky Johnston who they’ve already tried to offload to Flamengo this year only for it to break down at the last minute. So does Mason see himself playing with wingers? Or not? A back three? If so, you’re back with the Furlong and Styles issue on either side.

They’ll be fine. Former Everton junior Isaac Price was a breakout star of last season, I can’t wait to see more of him. But there’s a lot to sort out here, not a great deal of financial wiggle room to do that with, too many key players with dire injury records, and a rookie manager, so there could be early teething problems – albeit the fixture list has been reasonably kind to them through the first two months.

Manager: Ryan Mason 34 years old. Shot every time that gets a mention.

Oppo View – Matt Graham (@SAHistoryMatt) “Very much a season in two parts. Corberan had us very organised defensively and brilliant on the counter attack. We weren’t able to convert our enormous amount of draws into wins, that autumn run where we won one of 11 but didn’t lose was extraordinary. He had them drilled to within an inch of their lives and as soon as he left it felt like a lot of the players took it easy. Tony Mowbray came with good vibes, but didn’t seem to have a lot to offer tactically. He kept saying ‘release the handbrake’ and ‘play with freedom’ but this squad has demonstrated they need structure. The second half of the season saw us fall away. We won one in nine through March and April and that sealed his fate. It was disappointing, he was the messiah returning, but it just didn’t work out. The drop off was really bad.

“I think tenth is fair. Anywhere between seventh and tenth.”

Listen to the full interview with Matt on our Patreon season preview show.

Prediction – 9th (@AnalyticsQPR – 13th) Mid-table team sans-Corberan, but Isaac Price a big talent to watch.

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Pictures - Reuters Connect, Ian Randall

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