Part two of our season preview focuses on an intriguing midtable picture where Middlesbrough and Stoke are stinking the place up, Derby, Disney FC and Millwall feel upwardly mobile, and everybody is looking at that Watford attack thankful they don’t have to play centre half against it.

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.

Middlesbrough 25/1

Last Season: 10th (we said 5th, -5) Every year we go hot and heavy on Middlesbrough (fifth we said last year, second the season before) and every year they let us down by mooching around in midtable (tenth last year, eighth the season before). If that’s frustrating for a jobbing QPR blogger, imagine what it’s like following this lot.

A real epitome of all the gear and no idea. At Loftus Road, Boro absolutely torched Marti Cifuentes’ QPR in a real low point of our season. Ben Doak and Hevertton Santos got on like a house on fire – Santos was the house, and Doak was the fire. Later that same week they scored six times at Oxford, bagging 15 goals in three games in seven days with a 5-1 homer against Luton into the bargain. And yet, rarely looked like they would trouble the play-offs.

The return fixture at the Riverside was perhaps more instructive. QPR, a poor side already on the beach with little riding on the game, turned in another shockingly bad performance. Boro calmly cruised into a 2-0 lead in third gear. With ten minutes to go Rangers surprisingly pulled a goal back through Steve Cook from a set piece, and with that Boro collapsed on themselves completely. Unable to hold the ball, or defend without it, torn between holding what they had and pushing on for a third, caught in an outright panic, they came within a whisker of conceding a famous equaliser to Paul Nardi in the last minute of stoppage time.

Good time guys. When the going was good, everybody was happy and flicking and tricking. Hayden Hackney and Aidan Morris one of the Championship’s best midfields. But at the merest hint of pressure, in any sort of mildly difficult situation, whenever their back was put to the wall, their inability to just dig in for half an hour and grind out a 1-0 was chronic. Some of the worst in-game management in the division.

Injuries, as they so often are for Middlesbrough, were undoubtedly a huge factor in their failure. That game with QPR saw them take to the field without a fit centre back – Jonny Howson played in the middle of the defence. But Carrick felt like the least pragmatic manager in the Championship last season. More bothered about auditioning for his appearance on The Overlap than actually coming up with realistic solutions to Boro’s problems. Three nil up at home to Sheff Wed at half time, it was 3-3 by the hour and they were lucky to get a point.

It wouldn’t have needed much. They finished four points outside the six in a year when a record low points total was required to make them. Watford, Norwich, Cardiff, Preston and Portsmouth all took points from the Riverside while finishing in the bottom half of the league.

Ins >>> Abdoulaye Kante, 20, DM, Troyes, £2.5m >>> Alfie Jones, 27, CB, Hull, Undisclosed >>> Callum Brittain, 27, RB, Blackburn, Undisclosed

Outs >>> Josh Coburn, 22, CF, Millwall, £5m >>> Anfernee Dijksteel, 28, RB, Kocaelispor, Free >>> Jonny Howson, 37, CM, Released >>> George Gitau, 21, RB, Released

This Season: There was still a deal of shock when Steve Gibson’s patience snapped with Carrick after three years, a few weeks beyond the end of the season. No surprise to see them replace him with Rob Edwards though – that felt nailed on from the start and Boro have still only had one foreign manager in their history. That was Aitor Karanka who was the one to actually get them promoted, but then if you’d had to watch Aitor Karanka football you’d probably go back to domestic appointments as well.

Edwards has a lot to prove. Good with a good budget at Forest Green, bombed out after 20 minutes at Watford, promoted in fine style with Luton and a decent fist of the Premier League in incredibly trying and almost tragic circumstances, but then made a real mess of things last year when the budget and squad was there to push for the play-offs and the Hatters ended up implausibly relegated. Is this housewife’s favourite a bit emperor’s new clothes? And is he a significant enough departure from Carrick to turn the wheel here?

I have my doubts. Boro were too porous at the back last year, couldn’t hold onto leads or see out victories. Carrick was unable to fix it and paid with his job. Luton were too porous at the back last year, couldn’t hold onto leads or see out victories. Edwards was unable to fix it and paid with his job. Edwards has always played with a back three to this point. Middlesbrough do not have the players, either at centre back or wing back, for that system as it stands.

Those suspicions are certainly not allayed by a summer of almost non-existent transfer business. Boro have always spent under Steve Gibson’s stewardship and with £25m taken in each of the last two seasons for Morgan Rogers and Chuba Akpom then Latte Lath and Isaiah Jones there should be plenty of headroom here. But they tend to do their business too late in the summer for me and so far it’s only Alfie Jones from Hull and Abdoulaye Kante from Troyes incoming with Callum Brittain a steady Luke Ayling replacement from Blackburn due any day. That’s not enough, is it, to move this team from tenth to sixth? In fact, it feels more likely to slide the other way to me at this stage with Hackney now Ipswich bound and star defender Rav Van Den Berg reportedly not far behind him.

Those sales will provide a significant pot of money to spend, but they really need to get spending it all over the park – up front where Finn Azaz I quite like but Tommy Conway lacks significant support without Latte Lath, in midfield and defence where the Hackney and Van Den Berg departures would leave craters rather than holes, and particularly in goal where Seny Dieng spends more time in the Bigg Market than between the sticks, Mark Travers has gone to Everton and Tom Glover doesn’t inspire.

Having banged on about Adi Viveash being the brains behind Mark Robins at Coventry it would be remiss not to say that Edwards has brough him in here as his assistant. But one win from six to finish last season… It's taken a while, but we’ve lost faith.

Manager: Rob Edwards Make sure you the wedding ring in shot, Robert.

Oppo View – Dana Malt (@danamalt @Boro_Breakdown) “Like death by a thousand cuts. Beyond frustrating. You put your emotion into the season and hopes in the team and Boro just haven’t delivered. It feels like they’ve teased us into believing we’re a good team. Ultimately we keep falling short. I’ve learnt from that, I’m going into this season a little less hopeful and a little more pessimistic.

“My baseline prediction is eighth because that’s our average since our last relegation, but we need to do good business in the market between now and the deadline to be anywhere near that.”

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

Prediction – 14th (@AnalyticsQPR – 10th) Downwardly mobile. Although maybe we’re just grumpy with them for letting this preview down every year.

Wrexham 25/1

Last Season: 2nd in League One From Conference football to Championship in consecutive seasons. Never been done before. Completed it mate. A Walt Disney storyline indeed.

Outwardly Wrexham were projecting 2024/25 as a season of consolidation back in a third tier they last played in back in 2002. What they found was a league so low on quality, with most teams just happy to sit in against them and try to protect a 0-0, that they almost couldn’t help but dominate it all over again and go up automatically once more. Only the freakish 111 point Birmingham ahead of them, co-owner Rob McElhenney says they “don’t know the meaning of consolidation”.

It wasn’t like they even took time to bed in. They won five and lost only one of their first eight league games – that loss coming at St Andrew’s, 3-1. By Christmas Phil Parkinson’s team were on another unbeaten run of nine, and they lost only three league games through to New Year’s Day. Ryan Longman from Hull and Jay Rodriguez from Burnley were among the January additions as the Welsh side looked to press home the advantage and hold off what challenges were coming from the likes of Stockport and Bolton.

Three defeats and a draw counts as a wobble through January but they only lost two of the last 18, won seven of the last ten and cantered up again five points clear of third with 92 in the bag. Weirdly, for all that, top scorers were Steven Fletcher, Oli Rathbone and Elliot Lee with just eight goals apiece.

Ins >>> Lewis O’Brien, 26, CM, Forest, £3m >>> Liberato Cacace, 24, LB, Empoli, £2m >>> Kieffer Moore, 32, CF, Sheff Utd, £2m >>> Conor Coady, 32, CB, Leicester, £2m >>> George Thomason, 24, CM, Bolton, £1m >>> Ryan Hardie, 28, CF, Plymouth, £800k >>> Josh Windass, 31, AM, Sheff Wed, Free >>> Danny Ward, 32, GK, Leicester, Free

Outs >>> Sam Dalby, 25, CF, Bolton, Free >>> Mark Howard, 38, GK, Salford, Free >>> Bradley Foster, 23, GK, Ross County, Free >>> Josh Adam, 21, AM, Budejovice (Czech), Free >>> Luke Bolton, 25, RB, Mansfield, Undisclosed >>> Will Boyle, 29, CB, Shrewsbury, Undisclosed >>> Luke McNicholas, 25, GK, Fores Green, Undisclosed >>> Paul Mullin, 30, CF, Wigan, Loan >>> Jordan Davies, 26, CM, Released >>> Steven Fletcher, 38, CF, Released >>> Liam Hall, 20, GK, Released

This Season: There is a good deal of scepticism around whether Wexham can continue this seemingly unstoppable momentum of the last three seasons and really compete in their first second tier season since 1982. They’ve come an awful long way in a very short period of time, consecutive promotions from non-league to this level is unprecedented, and the growing pains around the club are there for all to see when you look at the reams and reams of infighting, squabbling and protest over how they’re going about distributing tickets for home games and a 3,100 allocation for the opener at Southampton. This club spent 15 years in non-league, it wasn’t just a passing fancy.

And look, I get it. How many Championship-standard players are there really in this team? Okonkwo, Rathbone, Cleworth and then? How many have the potential to step up? Certainly, in the Conference and League Two they flat track bullied their way to promotion by simply spending money teams didn’t have on players from the division or two above – Paul Mullin top scored for Cambridge in League Two and then instead of going with them to League One dropped down to Conference to play up front for Wrexham. They won’t be able to do that this year. They’ve also not been shy of paying large wages to get big names to drop down from the divisions above at the end of their careers – Steven Fletcher, Ben Foster, Jay Rodriguez etc. But Premier League players are a different thing altogether so that’s not going to cut the same ice in this division, and those players aren’t going to be able to step back up to help (well, Rodriguez might…).

The trendies don’t like Phil Parkinson’s football either. Lots of “ceiling” talk for a manager who did decent work at Colchester, Bradford and Bolton but failed at Hull, Charlton and Sunderland.

But, I’m sold, I think. Certainly not for another promotion, or even a play-off tilt, but I see this lot up towards the top end of that middle cohort in this year’s league.

Sure, it’s an entertainment product. All Disney series, podcasts, American tours, tourist attraction. It’s going to drive us all nuts. But as Christian Nourry pointed out at the fan forum last week, it’s allowing them to clear £30m in commercial revenue alone in League One. Follow the money - that’s eight or nine times what a Championship side can expect. We’ve been moaning about Stoke declaring £10m with their Bet365 workarounds and here’s a newly promoted team that’s probably going to be looking at four times that this season. It means FFP/PSR concerns don’t exist in the same way they do for the sort of QPR, Swansea and West Brom sides they’re going to be bidding against this summer.

You’ve already seen that with them blowing their Welsh rivals out of the water for the permanent signature of Forest’s Lewis O’Brien. We always bump teams with him in midfield up a few places, he’s a cheat code in this division for me, every Huddersfield or Swansea type that has him in their side vastly outperforms expectations, and that’s a really shrewd addition. He would transform this QPR side overnight. This is the thing I like about Wrexham, it’s big names and big money sure, but Parkinson puts a pragmatic team on the field first and foremost. This summer they’ve gone right down the spine of the side straight away – Danny Ward in goal, Conor Coady at centre back, Lewis O’Brien in midfield, Josh Windass in attack and Kieffer Moore up top. Bosh. Nathan Broadhead is linked with a £7m move from Ipswich – overpriced, but a good player.

Now, there can be problems with all this as QPR found when they went into the Premier League and tried to jettison the players who got them there in favour of ‘names’. Wrexham’s goalkeeper Arthur Okonkwo has been top of the save stats in League Two and One, suggesting the team in front of him isn’t quite as good as the results suggest. Are you shifting him aside for Danny Ward, who was bloody awful at Leicester? If so, maybe it’ll all fall apart, but you’d be surprised if a team with that spine went down, or even struggled, wouldn’t you?

Manager: Phil Parkinson Channels.

Oppo View – Racecourse Ramble (@racecourserambl) “It's all still bizarre, each year the level of craziness goes up a level. This year we're trying to pay £7.5m for a player.... we hadn't spent that in our history on players. On one hand though I'm kind of glad we endured years of misery if this is the sweet taste of redemption for that. We’re living a dream we know won't last and just trying to enjoy the ride whilst we can.

“It’s gonna be a challenge for our fans, we're going to lose more often and have longer spells without a win than we've been used too. It's fascinating to see how everyone will adjust. I think on paper we should be mid table if the players adapt. Phil Parkinson is fantastically experienced and so there won't be any panic during rough spells. Give me mid-table safety now, add a few in the summer and maybe next year we can have a strong promotion push.”

Prediction – 13th (@AnalyticsQPR – 15th) It's always sunny in Wrexham, we had them as high as ninth at one stage.

Watford 40/1

Last Season: 14th (we said 21st, +7) Well, I guess the first thing to say is Watford managed to get through a whole season with the same manager in charge. Congratulations guys. Before we get all “he’s definitely changed this time, mum”, Tom Cleverley was indeed sacked the second the season ended.

That was seen as quite harsh across the wider Championship community. A 14th placed finish for the side the Not The Top 20 lads had dead last in their pre-season predictions was a creditable achievement. Cleverley seemed to have done a good job, united an obviously fractured dressing room, reconnecting the supporters to their club, and steadying a potentially volatile situation after the previous year. He made them particularly hard to beat at Vicarage Road – QPR’s 0-0 there in October part of an unbeaten run of 17 games in which they kept ten clean sheets. Not very Watford-y at all.

The problems came after Christmas, where form wise they were just about as bad as anybody in the league – five wins in 24 games through the second half of the season, and 14 defeats among that run too including four of the last five games. They have the lowest points total of anybody in the division so far in 2025. That’s not a team trending in the right direction and a lot of the underlying numbers had been poor even before that – they were the worst first half team in the Championship even in the first half of the campaign.

QPR took four points off the Hornets last season and dominated both games – how we failed to win at Vicarage Road with the chances created I still can’t fathom – and those matches were instructive to Watford as a whole really. I think most QPR fans came away thinking Chakvetadze was one of, if not the, best player we’d seen all season. You look at the size of them, you see Kwadwo Baah bearing down on Morgan Fox and you think ‘fuck me, we’re in the shit here’. And then you beat them 3-1 and deserve to do it. Jimmy Dunne crawls all over the top of them.

Despite Cleverley’s best efforts this still felt like an Udinese feeder club in the Pozzo system. A team that lacked heart, and was consistently less than the sum of its parts.

Ins >>> Nestory Irankunda, 19, RW, Bayern, £2.5m >>> Othmane Maamma, 19, RW, Montpellier, £1m >>> Marc Bola, 27, LB, Samsunspor, Free >>> Nathan Baxter, 26, GK, Bolton, Free >>> Hector Kyprianou, 24, DM, Peterborough, Free >>> Vivaldo Semedo, 20, CF, Udinese, Undisclosed >>> Luca Kyerrumgaard, 22, CF, Udinese, Loan

Outs Mileta Rajovic, 25, CF, Legia Warsaw, £2.5m >>> Francisco Sierralta, 28, CB, Auxerre, £1.5m >>> Antonio Tikvic, 21, CB, PR Munster, £500k >>> Ryan Porteous, 26, CB, LAFC, Undisclosed >>> Jorge Hurtado, 21, CF, Millonarios, Loan >>> Myles Roberts, 23, GK, Walsall, Loan >>> Angelo Ogbonna, 37, CB, Released

This Season: And, so, we’re incredibly wary of them when predicting the Championship league table. There is absolutely the basis of a team and a collection of talent here capable of challenging for the play-offs if sufficiently motivated. Would I be surprised to see them take the sixth play-off spot? Not at all.

But the vibe is all wrong here, and has been for some time. No team has as few points as this lot so far this year. Returning to that game at Loftus Road, you’ve got Moussa Sissoko there who, let’s be fair, against a midfield of Sam Field and Kieran Morgan should be absolutely beasting it out of the park, and instead he’s just jogging around, going through the motions. Would I be surprised to see the whole thing collapse into a season of multiple managerial changes, fan unrest and a fight to stay out of the bottom three? Again, not at all.

They’re one of, if not the, hardest to call on this year’s coupon, wo we’ve whacked them in the middle to make sure we’re not wrong by more than 12 places.

There are plenty of positives, and almost all of them are in the forward department. This lot should score an absolute tonne of goals this season.

Chakvetadze remains along with Imran Louzza – very classy centre of the park combination. Baah remains and if he stays fit for any length of time he’s going to be one of the most formidable forwards in the Championship. He's joined by another 6ft 4ins weapon in Vivaldo Semedo, a 19-year-old who scored nine in 15 starts on loan in Portugal last year (albeit second division), and Luca Kjerrumgaard, 19 goals in 23 appearances in Denmark for OB last year. Another forward, Nestory Irankunda, arrives from Bayern with five senior Australian caps already as a teenager as the summer’s most expensive recruit. On paper you’re not going to want to face this strike force if they’re in the mood – big, powerful, prolific, quick, awkward.

Naturally, these incomings involve the usual couple of left-hand-to-right-hand swaps of players with Udinese – an undisclosed fee and a loan, colour me shocked – but the Pozzo’s are said to be close to a €150m exit from the Italian club and are turning their full focus on getting Watford back to the Premier League. They’ll need to, their popularity has seriously waned in Hertfordshire.

The weaknesses are mainly at the other end. Egil Selvik is a welcome upgrade from Danananananana Bachmann in goal but the defence in front of him needs major surgery. Ryan Porteous could be erratic/violent and was on loan at Preston by the end of last year, but his departure to LA FC on the eve of the season leaves a team already short at centre back very reliant on 'son of God' Matty Pollock. They’ve been struggling at right back for a while and done little to address that. Marc Bola comes in on the left.

New manager Paulo Pezzolano arrives in football’s hottest seat with a reputation as a “promotion specialist”. The Uruguayan achieved elevation in his homeland with Torque in his first job, in Brazil with Cruzeiro having been appointed by new owner Original Ronaldo, and then in Spain for another of the Brazilian's team Real Valladolid.

Manager: Paulo Pezzolano Until October-ish.

Oppo View – Richard Segal “The proverbial season of two halves as you can tell from the results. An unexpected good start built around being undefeated at home until December 28, and then a disappointing second half with only five wins.

Just as importantly the three best players remain at the club. If Imran Louza, Kwadwo Baah and Giorgi Chakevtadze all remain past August and one of the new strikers is able to adapt to the league and hit the ground running then we have lots of options as an attacking force. With that in mind I am going to stick my neck out and go for a top ten finish.”

Prediction – 10th (@AnalyticsQPR 11th) Had them firmly in the bottom half in the first draft but have drunk some Kool-Aid since. May regret it with this defence.

Millwall 40/1

Last Season: 8th (we said 17th, +9) Millwall were one of the worst teams QPR faced in 23/24 and looked a good bet for relegation before bailing out of their attempt to go all hip and trendy with Chelsea coach Joe Edwards. This is Millwall, and what the situation required was Neil Harris and a few long throws. They won their last five games of the season, four of them 1-0. Phwoar, get your chops round that darling.

Given his legendary status, and that he’d walked away from Cambridge to take the job, Harris was obviously going to be given the new season to have another chomp at the Championship after that finish, but it never felt an easy fit. Sure, a four-game winning streak through October, all of them 1-0 (phwoar, etc etc) was decent enough but there is just a feeling here that, while the Edwards experiment was a failure, chairman James Berylson is keen to move the football operations here into 2025 after succeeding his popular late father. Steve Gallen has been hired from Charlton to oversee a recruitment operation that made eye-catching signings like Lukas Jensen and Japhet Tanganga last summer that I was really rather jealous of.

Sure enough, by the first week of December, Harris was describing criticism of his team’s 1-0 home loss to Coventry as the work of “thickos” and within a week he was on his way again. Shame, I would have liked to watch that one play out after a comment like that.

Alex Neil felt like an annoyingly good fit. Perfect mix of modern progressive and old school hard bastard. It didn’t work out like that immediately, Wawll won one of 13 games through the winter, but a deserved 2-1 defeat of QPR at The Den was part of another set of four consecutive wins and from there, bar a controversial FA Cup exit at Crippled Alice, the Lions roared home with a wet sail.

Seven wins from ten games had them going into the last day at Burnley with a play-off chance. They were winning that game early, and missed a stone cold sitter through Josh Coburn to press home that advantage, before succumbing 3-1.

Ins >>> Josh Coburn, 22, CF, Boro, £5m >>> Mass Luongo, 32, CM, Ipswich, Free >>> Max Crocombe, 31, GK, Burton, Free >>> Alfie Doughty, 25, LM, Luton, Undisclosed >>> Zak Sturge, 21, LB, Chelsea, Undisclosed >>> Steven Benda, 26, GK, Fulham, Loan

Outs >>> Zian Flemming, 26, CF, Burnley, £8m >>> Aaron Connolly, 25, CF, Orient, Free >>> George Saville, 32, CM, Luton, Free >>> George Honeyman, 30, CM, Blackpool, Free >>> Murray Wallace, 32, CB, Huddersfield, Free >>> Liam Roberts, 30, GK, Mansfield, Free >>> Duncan Watmore, 31, CF, Released >>> Shaun Hutchinson, 34, CB, Released

This Season: Not last year, admittedly, but we do tend to overtip Millwall in this preview every year, so bear that in mind as we make our case for this being the ‘best of the rest’ in that pack of Boro, West Brom and Norwich types all shooting for fifth and sixth position.

There have been, finally, some significant player sales here. Zian Flemming fetched £8m in from Burnley, Romain Esse near double that from Palace. They’re spending it well, too. Tanganga was a terrific pick up from Spurs. Mihailo Ivanovic, after a rocky start, looks like developing into a beastly Flemming upgrade in attack, still just 20 years old. Millwall fan Alfie Doughty is not just a nice story – he’s one of the best left sided players in this league and he’s still only 25, him and a permanent deal for Chelsea’s Zak Sturge looks shrewd business to me down that side of the pitch.

There’s been a much-needed clearance of some loyal servants who’d come to the end of the road here. Seven players released at the end of last year, five of them 30 or over, and while George Saville, Duncan Watmore, Murray Wallace, Shaun Hutchinson, George Honeyman etc have all been useful infantry over the years, Millwall look like they’re replacing with much better. Mass Luongo and a rumoured move for Barry Bannan shows they’re not totally oblivious to that bleed of experience and leadership either.

Lukas Jensen is a big miss with a long term injury into the new year, necessitating a loan for Fulham’s Steven Benda (stop it), but it’s worth bearing in mind that last year’s hot run towards the top six happened despite an ever-increasing injury list. Their biggest outlay last summer was on 23-year-old winger Camiel Neghli from Rotterdam and he’s only been able to start twice because of injury – sound the ‘like a new signing’ klaxon this August.

There’s not a great deal of cover for the formidable centre back pairing of Cooper and Tanganga, and there’s a possibility the latter or Ivanovic may get picked off in the remainder of the transfer window, but you go through the squad here and there are two, really good, senior player options for every position: Leonard or McNamara at right back; Cooper, Tanganga, Crama, Harding at centre back; Sturge or Bryan at left back; excellent Casper De Norre, Eastenders’ Billy Mitchell, Luongo for CM; Neglhi or Azeez on the right; Doughty or Emakhu on the left; exciting pick up Luke Cundle or young prospect Bangura-Williams attacking midfield; Ivanovic, Coburn, Langstaff, Lovelace, Nisbet up top. Depth we can only dream of at Loftus Road, hence injuries didn’t derail them last season. A beautifully balanced squad right across the park, mixture of youth and experience, some real exciting talents along with some proper Championship bollocks. I don’t see a weak spot.

I don’t particularly like Neil, and I loathe the shithouse tendencies of his teams, particularly away from home. There was a rumour he was going to reunite with Ben Pearson this summer but I fear those two in Millwall colours would be like Ghostbusters crossing the streams – to be avoided. But Neil’s been a good manager everywhere he’s been apart from Stoke and, as we’ve frequently discussed, failure at Stoke doesn’t really count. I think he’s a perfect fit here. A much more Millwall-style of progress than Joe Edwards.

The recruitment is shrewd, and there’s more money to spend. Four eighth-placed finishes in eight years. Twice in three seasons they’ve gone down to the last day with a chance of sixth but lost the final game. I think they’ll get over that line this year.

Manager: Alex Neil In play-off form since he walked through the door.

Oppo View – Lucas Ball (@LucasBall2211) “Last season started quite well and we were in the top six around the start of November. Then, all of a sudden, it started to unravel under Neil Harris. There had been murmurs of discontent after our slow business in the summer and then Harris’ comments became (not so) indirectly digs at Steve Gallen and the new set-up at times, particularly over then-record signing Mihailo Ivanovic.

“I think this is our best squad for a long time. We have interest in a couple of key players in Japhet Tanganga and Ivanovic so need to try to keep hold of them, Ivanovic especially. Neil is a more tactically astute manager than the likes of Gary Rowett and Harris, and tries to win every game - Rowett, in particular, was too negative. Everyone seems to be singing from the same hymn sheet, we’ve got the best squad we’ve had in a long time and I think the league could be a little unpredictable this year. That makes for me being increasingly positive over our chances and I think we’ll get over the line to the top six finally. I wouldn’t fancy anyone against us in the play-offs if we get there. COYL.”

Prediction – 6th (@AnalyticsQPR 9th) Milllllllllllllll.

Stoke 40/1

Last Season: 18th (we said 15th, -3) God bless Stoke City. It’s no small task pulling together this marathon run down of 23 Championship sides each summer, so it’s nice to have at least one club consistently delivering the same shitshow year on year. Copy & Paste FC, seven consecutive seasons of bottom half finishes (16th, 15th, 14th, 14th, 16th, 17th, 18th) since relegation from the Premier League. Just take what we said last season, change a couple of names and dates, roll it out and watch this lot implode all over again.

First thing they do is sign a load more players. Often players you’ve heard of. Usually players at the wrong end of their career. Frequently borrowed on loan. Another 12 additions last year, half temporarily. Why not stodge up that defence by stirring in a 31-year-old Ben Gibson? And what’s £2m when we’re talking mighty Sam Gallagher (nine starts, three goals)? To achieve those seven bottom half finishes Stoke have signed 98 players and spent £75m doing it (that just the declared fees, plenty of undisclosed on that list as well). This club has lost £200m+ on seven consecutive bottom half finishes.

Second thing, let’s get a good, regular churn of managers going. Gary Rowett, Nathan Jones, Michael O’Neill, Alex Neil, Stephen Schumacher, Narcis Pelach and now Mark Robins have all had a swing at this job since 2018. Five of those managers have significant achievements on their CVs at other clubs, often in challenging environments. At Stoke they’re barely able to find a pulse. Schumacher would likely have been binned off by inexperienced director of football Jon Walters last February had they not beaten QPR 1-0 on Valentine’s Day. Instead, on the basis of a single goal victory with a set piece goal against a team playing with its own fist up its arse, Schumacher was retained, given a summer and a budget, and then sacked five days after the end of the transfer window. It is not the first time this club has binned a manager off immediately after letting him spend the summer money moulding the team his way. Narcis Pelach was a trendy, forward thinking appointment for a dinosaur park and it went swiftly downhill. Still, he was sacked after a home loss to Leeds made it nine without a win. So, eight without a win is okay but now you’ve lost to the best team in the league we simply must remove you. Did they expect to do anything other than lose that game 2-0? The timing of their decisions is almost as bizarre as the decisions themselves.

Step forward Mark Robins, freshly binned off from Coventry where his legendary status couldn’t survive what was a fairly typically bad start to the season by the Sky Blues. This, for me, is an appointment that sums Stoke up quite nicely. Because in theory that’s great, right? Robins brought Coventry from the depths of despair in the bottom league into the Championship, play-off finals, FA Cup semi-finals. Very underrated manager. Somebody you’ve heard of. Trusted pair of hands. But it’s again Stoke just grabbing at a name, slinging it into their mess and thinking he’s going to solve it all for them. Gary Rowett had great success at Burton, Birmingham, Millwall and now Oxford, but was dreadful at Stoke. Nathan Jones succeeded twice at Luton and once at Charlton, but not at Stoke. Alex Neil won promotions at Hamilton, Norwich and Sunderland, is doing brilliantly at Millwall, did a steady job at PNE… was rubbish at Stoke. Stephen Schumacher got Plymouth promoted in fine style… Mark Robins was never the same at Coventry once he fell out with and parted company with his assistant Adi Viveash, so if Viveash isn’t part of the package then don’t do it.

You could say they were unfortunate top scorer Tom Cannon got recalled in January, but this lot finished four places but only two points outside the bottom three. They would have gone closer still were it not for the flying broomstick form of goalkeeper Viktor Johansson – 14 clean sheets and 71% save percentage in a poor team.

Ins >>> Maksym Taloverov, 25, CB, Plymouth, £1.5m >>> Aaron Cresswell, 35, LB, West Ham, Free >>> Róbert Boženík, 25, CF, Boavista, Undisclosed >>> Sorba Thomas, 26, RW, Huddersfield, Undisclosed >>> Divin Mubama, 20, CF, Man City, Loan >>> Ashley Phillips, 20, CB, Spurs, Loan

Outs >>> Wouter Burger, 24, DM, Hoffenheim, £3.5m >>> Souleymane Sidibe, 18, CM, PSV, £2m >>> Lynden Gooch, 29, RB, Huddersfield, Free >>> Jordan Thompson, 28, CM, Preston, Free >>> Niall Ennis, 26, CF, Blackpool, Undisclosed >>> Nikola Jojic, 21, RW, Radmolje (Slovenia), Loan >>> Emre Tezgel, 19, CF, Crewe, Loan >>> Tommy Simkin, 20, GK, Orient, Loan >>> Nathan Lowe, 19, CF, Stockport, Loan >>> Michael Rose, 29, CB, Released >>> Enda Stevens, 34, LB, Released

This Season: Stoke’s big idea to show you how much they’ve changed and how different it’s going to be this season is a handsome pension top up for West Ham’s 35-year-old Aaron Cresswell to come and be their left back for 20 minutes. That noise you can hear is me banging my head on the desk. But hang on, just when you think that’s the most Stoke thing you’ve heard since the last thing Stoke did, back in training in the Potteries now is… Steven Nzonzi, a hero of their Premier League team but last here in 2015, now 36 and released from a stint with Persian Gulf Pro League outfit Sepahan.

Nzonzi is presumably being eyed to stodge up a midfield that has lost the team’s outstanding outfield player Wouter Burger, and Sol Sidibe. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, we’ve talked throughout this preview about how clubs at this level need to regularly sell players to be able to build their squads, but Stoke got barely £6m for the pair of them. Burger is an outstanding talent at this level, and was being linked with £8m+ moves to Spurs less than a year ago, now picked up by Hoffenheim for less than £4m. But hang on, just when you’re starting to wonder what on earth it is they’re up to in these parts, news breaks today that… Viktor Johansson might be leaving too.

I don’t know. I try to look for positives here, but one of those was talented 19-year-old striker Nathan Lowe who scored 15 league goals in 20 starts for Walsall last season. Stoke recalled him in January destroying the Saddlers’ promotion push in the process, barely used him through a dire second half to their own season, and have now… loaned him out again to Stockport. Are Stoke really so blessed with forwards to do that?

Maksym Taloverov impressed as Plymouth’s dominant centre back at this level and Ashley Phillips is returning from Spurs alongside him. QPR-botherer Sorba Thomas returns from a loan spell in France and will do well at this level as always. Divin Mubama is an exciting pick up from Man City. There are also some intriguing young talents here - Junior Tchamadeu, Eric Bocat, Million Manhoef, Bosun Lawal. They beat QPR easily at home last year and would have done the same at Loftus Road with a different referee. The starting 11 can look quite good on paper – you look at Lewis Baker and think he’s not a bad player, Bae Jun-Ho isn’t a bad player, Ben Pearson’s a fucking goblin. But I can’t look at this squad, this club, this management set up, Jon Walters sporting director, Aaron Cresswell left back, and think anything other than… more of the same.

Manager: Mark Robins Well, to start with at least.

Oppo View – Ben Rowley @benarowly @TheYYYFiles “Arguably our worst season since relegation from the Premier League in 2017/18. Serious mismanagement at the top level left us in a perilous position right up until the second half of the final day. Sacking our first manager five days after a summer transfer of building for him, to then replace him with a coach who delivered amongst the worst set of results in Stoke’s 160+ year history. Injuries to key players didn’t help, but by the end of the season, we could only rely on a handful of players to deliver. Without Viktor Johansson in goal, I fear we’d have been relegated long before the end.

“My two cents: we finish 13th.”

Prediction – 17th (@AnalyticsQPR – 14th) Copy & Paste FC.

Bristol City 50/1

Last Season: 6th (we said 9th, +3) Ah the Rob Dickie reach-around. How often we’ve seen that arm come snaking out, grabbing the shoulder of a fast-disappearing centre forward running off his back into dangerous space. Dickie’s chronic lack of pace means things like that are always a ticking time bomb with him, and unfortunately for Bristol City this time it exploded right in the middle of a play-off semi-final they’d worked so hard to reach over several years. To be fair, they perhaps should have known, he was sent off in the home league game against Sheff Utd as well.

The two-legged tie with the Blades was every bit as one-sided as you’d expect given Chris Wilder’s side finished 22 points ahead of the Robins in regulation play (with two points deducted). The anti-climactic manner of it, and Liam Manning’s subsequent departure to Norwich, has left me wondering exactly what to think about Bristol City.

On the one hand this seems a well-run Championship club with an ambitious chairman not afraid to stump up the cash. They’ve invested in infrastructure, transforming their stadium and building a shiny new training ground. The team has been thoughtfully and methodically built, financed with the sort of player sales we need ourselves in each of the last three seasons - £5m for Tommy Conway, £20m for Alex Scott, £10m for Antoine Semenyo. They’ve only had four permanent managers here since 2016, this summer is the first time they’ve changed a manager between seasons since 2010, and you can see them steadily improving over time – 19th, 17th, 14th, 11th, 6th. This is all the kind of stuff we need to aspire to, and making the play-offs was a nice next step on that journey. Very creditable in a league dominated by parachute payments.

Then you lose like that and the manager fucks off and you just feel a bit empty and… what was all that for? What’s going to be the legacy of that season because the team’s top scorer was 35-year-old Nahki Wells and he’s gone to Luton on a free, and its best player in a late season draw at Loftus Road was George Earthy who’s now back with West Ham. Manning was allowed to spend good money on this team last summer after the Scott and Semenyo sales, and while you could say a sixth-placed finish justified the outlay not many of the incomers made any kind of mark - £2.5m Sinclair Armstrong a particular dud to this point and not well liked by the Ashton Gate faithful.

I don’t know, I don’t want to diminish the achievement because I’ve talked this lot up for ages and this was their highest league finish in 17 years, but it was a really low points total required for sixth (City made it despite winning one of their final 15 away games) and it felt like they got there by beating the teams around them in narrow wins at Ashton Gate then got thrashed off the park as soon as they started.

Ins >>> Emil Riis, 27, CF, Preston, Free >>> Joe Lumley, 30, GK, Southampton, Free >>> Adam Randell, 24, DM, Plymouth, Undisclosed >>> Yu Hirakawa, 24, RW, Machida Zelvia (Japan), Undisclosed >>> Radek Vitek, 21, GK, Man Utd, Loan

Outs >>> Taylor Gardner-Hickman, 23, RB, Birmingham, £1.5m >>> Nahki Wells, 35, CF, Luton, Free >>> Kal Naismith, 33, CB, Luton, Free >>> Ayman Benarous, 21, CM, Plymouth, Free >>> Marcus McGuane, 26, DM, Huddersfield, Undisclosed >>> Stefan Bajic, 23, GK, Released

This Season: All of which speaks to the collection of season previews currently hitting shelves, lap top screens and ear drums this week, which almost without exception have City regressing back to mid-table. Norwich, 13th last year, one of the sides tipped to accelerate past them with Liam Manning in charge.

I’m not sure how fair this is. I’ve been tossing them around in my mind a lot over the last week.

Gerhard Struber was pretty impressive at Barnsley, taking them over seven points adrift of safety and keeping them in the Championship, before disappearing into the Red Bull universe. At Koln he was sacked two games before the end of a promotion season which they then won through anyway.

Emil Riis, if he stays fit, is a canny free transfer signing up front and scored twice against Plymouth at the weekend. It wasn’t all about Earthy last year – Jason Knight is about as good as they come at this level outside the parachute payment sides and remains so far while Anis Mehmeti had the breakout season he’d long been threatening with 12 goals in 29 starts. Max Bird, I like. Yu Hirakawa joins permanently. Scott Twine is here, in case they get a free kick. I felt it strange that Rob Atkinson, who I rate, was loaned to Portsmouth, where he did well, but with Manning gone and half a season in blue under his belt, he’s back. Adam Randell was steady at Plymouth.

Joe Lumley is a scary signing from Southampton but any notion he’d been brought here to do anything other than bibs, balls and cones for the other goalkeepers has been quashed by the arrival of giant Man Utd man-child Radek Vitek who was signed roughly 30 seconds after Paul Smyth’s walkabout favourite Max O’Leary picked up a nasty pre-season injury.

Manning was boring but effective. Last season’s league finish was an over-performance. Will this squad benefit from a more frantic, higher-press, chaotic style under Struber? Or will that transition prove tricky?

Manager: Gerhard Struber Rob Dickie in a high defensive line anyone? A plan with some chest hair.

Oppo View – Dave Featherstone (@FevsFootball) “If you take the playoff defeat out of the equation finishing sixth was anything but an anti-climax. A season of two halves saw us much improved through February, March and April and that was enough. Even then we had to wait on Blackburn not scoring in injury time in the final game to avoid throwing away a playoff berth. We limped over the line, and it proved a step too far against Sheffield United over both legs. I think in hindsight winning a few 6-pointers 2-1 meant sixth flattered us a bit. But nobody else wanted it, so I wasn’t complaining.

I think we can be in the mix again, but we are just another club in amongst another nine or ten trying to be in the top couple / few of that mini-league.

Prediction – 11th (@AnalyticsQPR 7th) File under ‘fine’.

Swansea 50/1

Last Season: 11th (we said 14th, +3) The days of consolidated Premier League status, League Cup triumphs and European football feel as far away as ever for Swansea, another club like Leicester City once held up as a model for others to follow who subsequently badly lost their way under damaging new ownership.

Former Notts County boss Luke Williams felt like a really good fit here to me, certainly relative to Michael Duff who’d preceded him, but they won only three of their first dozen games after yet another summer of sub-optimal recruitment. QPR’s embarrassing 3-0 capitulation at The Liberty Stadium on Boxing Day was part of a better sequence of six wins from 12, but their propensity to throw away leads at home had been thrown into the spotlight by a 3-2 loss to Sunderland in which the Swans had taken a 2-0 lead.

The departure of star midfield man Matt Grimes to Coventry in January felt like a club effectively giving up on their season before it had ever really begun and there wasn’t enough good will around for the manager to survive another bad run. What was left was burned off by a damaging defeat to League One-bound Cardiff. Although they did scrape a televised 1-0 victory at Bristol City – a tough place to go in the second half of last season – Swansea had lost six and drawn one of the seven before that and quickly lost another two afterwards which saw Williams fired. He’s now working at Bristol Airport would you believe.

Manager gone, best player gone, fans arsey, play-offs well out of reach, relegation zone a safe enough distance away, there wasn’t really too much to like about Swansea’s prospects going into the final third of the season. And yet, with caretaker manager Alan Sheehan in charge and Lewis O’Brien pulling strings in midfield they became one of the form teams in the division. Only Burnley won in South Wales and there were away wins at QPR and Sunderland.

At one point they won five games in a row by the end of which they couldn’t really help but give Sheehan the job permanently.

Ins >>> Zeidane Inoussa, 23, LW, Hacken (Sweden), £5m >>> Ethan Glabraith, 24, CM, Orient, £1.5m >>> Bobby Wales, 20, CF, Kilmarnock, £300k >>> Cameron Burgess, 29, CB, Ipswich, Free >>> Ricardo Santos, 30, CB, Bolton, Free

Outs >>> Mykola Kukharevych, 24, CF, Slovan Bratislava, £700k >>> Harry Darling, 25, CB, Norwich, Free >>> Nathan Tjoe-A-On, 23, LB, Willem II, Free >>> Nathan Broome, 23, GK, Bolton, Free >>> Jerry Yates, 28, CF, Luton, Undisclosed >>> Florian Bianchini, 24, RW, Portsmouth, Loan >>> Ben Lloyd, 20, AM, Newport, Loan >>> Kristian Pedersen, 30, LB, Released >>> Joe Allen, 35, CM, Retired >>> Cyrus Christie, 32, RB, Released >>> Jon McLaughlin, 37, GK, Released >>> Kyle Naughton, 36, RB, Released

This Season: Swansea, for once, seem to be coming into the season in a positive mood and with some momentum after the way they finished last year under Alan Sheehan.

There’s been a much needed change of ownership here – Luka Modric and Snoop Dogg dreamteam – and although there have been early missteps they seem keen to make changes. Luke Williams didn’t last long and chairman Andy Coleman has been ushered aside paying the price for yet another chaotic January.

In contrast to that transfer window they’ve done good, early business this summer. Permanent transfers too, after too much prior reliance on loans. The Swans have spent some reasonably big money by their recent standards on Zeidane Inoussa from Sweden, and at the risk of weighing the poor boy to the bottom of Swansea Bay with the Jordan Cousins Memorial Millstone around his neck have potentially made pound-for-pound the best Championship signing of the summer in picking up Leyton Orient’s superb Ethan Galbraith for just £1.5m.

Ipswich centre back Cameron Burgess is a defender’s defender for a tough division rather than the more luxurious Harry Darling who has been lost to Norwich on a free – Burgess still only 29, feels like he’s been around a lot longer than that. Similarly, Lawrence Vigouroux is a real presence in goal with a command of his box after several terrifying years of trying to turn the goalkeeper into a fucking outfield playmaker. Let’s concentrate on keeping the ball out of our net first and foremost, shall we?

A mixture of big earners and obvious mistakes going out through the exit door in a clearance of dead wood – Kyle Naughton, Cyrus Christie, Krystian Pedersen who managed three starts in two years, Jerry Yates, ruddy bloody brave Joe Allen and so on. A lot of turnover, but much needed in my view.

This is a team dangerous down both flanks. I like both full backs, Key and Tymon, and Ronald is a threat on the wing – albeit an inconsistent one. The Swans are the latest side to try and prise Robert Kone out of Wycombe. That seems to be floundering at press time but would be an exciting prospect with that supply line. They’ve missed out on Roddy McScotsman who’s going to Hull, whether you think that’s a great loss is up to you.

Why, then, have we gone increasingly cold on them over the summer, having started with them hovering around tenth but now 15th in our predicted league ladder?

Well, the middle of that league from 8th to 18th is incredibly fluid and frankly if you tell me any team in that group finishes at the top of it or the bottom it wouldn’t surprise me. Swansea eighth and pushing the play offs? I can see that. Swansea 18th and looking over their shoulder? I can see that too. Last season there were three wins between Oxford in 17th and Boro in tenth – you can pick three wins up in a week in this league. Partly it’s simply because we’ve ended up fancying a few of those other midtable sides more, and we’re a bit scared of what to do with Watford.

Secondly, the idea of making the caretaker manager permanent because of a hot run in a load of end-of-season dead rubbers doesn’t thrill me as a strategy. Results often pick up when an unpopular manager leaves, and Luke Williams is really bloody intense. Add a bit of Championship pragmatism to a team lost in its managers ideals and results improve. I’m not saying they had much choice but to give him the job, I would have done too, and he’s done his coaching hard yards at Luton and Southampton, but if you look at who they beat it was QPR who were dreadful by that point, Hull who looked set to be relegated, Plymouth who were relegated, Sunderland who were keeping play-off powder dry, Derby, Middlesbrough and Blackburn.

Thirdly, they also had Lewis O’Brien in midfield during that run who, as you’ve seen from our Wrexham write up, we think is a bit of a cheat code at this level.

So, I don’t know, really. I’ve talked myself in and out of this lot several times over the summer. A lacklustre pre-season concluded with a 3-1 home loss to Leyton Orient’s more garlicky cousin Lorient at the weekend.

Manager: Alan Sheehan Give the caretaker the keys.

Oppo View – JackArmy.net (@Swansnews) “We finished well to get into the top half last season but it was a largely forgettable campaign. So much so I have forgotten about it already and I am told if I never speak about it, I should be over it really soon. So can we not talk about it?

“Results at the end of a season can skew some things easily as some of the games are dead rubbers. Can we maintain it? We can but we have a tough start and we will do well to do so. Said it last season and will say it this season, we will be mid table. Because we are a mid table side.”

Prediction – 15th (@AnalyticsQPR – 12th) He said it.

Derby 50/1

Last Season: 19th (we said 20th, +1) We’ve spoken about this before in relation to Daniel Farke at Norwich and now Leeds, and of course Barry Redchapp’s post play-off final confession that he’d spent much of the game thinking about what golf club memberships he’d be taking out the following year, but one does wonder again whether we’re approaching a more Italian way of thinking about this and the first manager who gets the sack after winning promotion may not be far away. After all, surviving in the Premier League is a very different task to getting promoted from the Championship and, as Paul Warne continues to prove, bringing a team out of League One is not the same challenge as keeping one in this league.

To be fair to the bobble hatted one he didn’t look like he was making a bad fist of it to begin with – certainly a better attempt than in his two prior failures with Rotherham. Four early wins on the board – all of them at home because you're more likely to fuck Jennifer Aniston than Paul Warne is win an away game at Championship level – and a nice lower midtable position which was only ever the aim anyway. They dominated and comprehensively beat QPR at Pride Park with effective central midfielder Ebou Adams the best player on the pitch and at that point I thought there was a lot to like about their shape, physicality and work rate versus our disparate collection of development prospects.

It wasn’t destined to last. Monster centre half pairing Curtis Nelson and Eiran Cashin being broken up by a bad injury and move to Brighton respectively was a huge blow. A summer spent signing Jerry Yates and Kayden Jackson to play up front in the Championship was never going to have too many defences sweating in their sleep (apart from Portsmouth, apparently, randomly trounced 4-0) and as winter blew through so a deep and lasting decline set in with the Rams. Six games without a win going into Christmas, 13 without one on the other side including an FA Cup exit at League One Leyton Orient.

Despite a rebuild in challenging circumstances and hard won promotion at Pride Park, Warne never felt like he fully won over a crowd here that still live their lives by a 'what would Cloughie think?' mantra. His football is, let’s be honest, not good to watch. Rams fans chanted as much even when pushing towards the top end of League One. It means there’s little patience and credit in the bank when results do go badly. And even a popular manager is going to struggle to survive a run of seven straight league defeats and four consecutive home games without scoring a goal (that run eventually went to six).

There was a fair amount of astonishment when John Eustace agreed to swap sixth-placed Blackburn for seemingly relegation-bound Derby, regardless of his ties there as a player. When they were hammered 4-0 at Loftus Road in his first game you could only wonder just how nice the Eustace family home in Derbyshire really must be. They looked absolutely down and out that night in W12 and lost the two subsequent games without scoring.

You’d probably have got reasonably short odds on Eustace getting his first win at home to Blackburn, sometimes these things are just written, but you’d have got substantially richer backing what happened next as Derby suddenly won four in a row including a 2-0 against Frank Lampard’s Coventry City and finished the year with six wins and two draws from ten games to survive with something to spare.

Well done, John. Everybody look at John.

Ins >>> Patrick Agyemang, 24, CF, Charlotte, £5m >>> Carlton Morris, 29, CF, Luton, Undisclosed >>> Rhian Brewster, 25, CF, Sheff Utd, Free >>> Andi Weimann, 33, AM, Blackburn, Free >>> Danny Batth, 34, CB, Blackburn, Free >>> Richard O’Donnell, 36, GK, Blackpool, Free >>> Owen Beck, 22, LB, Liverpool, Loan >>> David Ozoh, 20, DM, Palace, Loan >>> Dion Sanderson, 25, CB, Birmingham, Loan >>> Bobby Clark, 20, CM, Red Bull Salzburg, Loan

Outs >>> Tyrese Fornah, 25, CM, Northampton, Free >>> Nathaniel Mendez-Laing, 33, RW, MK Dons, Free >>> Tom Barkhuizen, 32, RW, barrow Free >>> Sonny Bradley, 33, CB, Lincoln, Free >>> Conor Washington, 33, CF, Matlock, Free >>> Kemar Roofe, 32, CF, Released >>> Erik Pieters, 36, LB, Released >>> Jeff Hendrick, 33, CM, Released >>> Rohan Luhtra, 23, GK, Released

This Season: A year ago when tipping Blackburn for a potential relegation scrap we couldn’t quite wrap our heads around all the other Championship season previews saying they’d be fine because John Eustace was their manager. I mean, it’s only John Eustace isn’t it? It’s hardly Wayne Bennett super coach.

Fair to say we’re now converts. To have both Birmingham and Blackburn in the play-off picture with the budget and circumstances he was working with there was excellent management, and to take the Derby side we saw at Loftus Road on Valentine’s night and get six wins in the last ten games out of it little short of miracle working. There are several teams in this league for whom the manager is the best thing about them (we used to be one of them) and Derby certainly fit into that category. We’re elevating them in our predictions purely because of who’s in the dugout.

The February job swap seemed to say more about the state of Blackburn than anything particularly going for Derby, but however chaotic things were/are at Ewood Park it’s clear Eustace will have been made some promises about summer backing to make a jump like that in those circumstances. Lo, Derby are spending some money again. Sure, they got £10m for Eiran Cashin in January which loosens the FFP/PSR purse strings a little, but it’s been an eye-catching summer of business all the same with the onside version of Patrick Agyemang coming over from America in a big money deal, Carlton Morris looking to put a horrible year at Luton behind him, and Owen Beck, who I would have loved on the left side of the QPR defence, joining on loan from Liverpool. Former Newcastle and Liverpool protégé Bobby Clark is an exciting loan capture from Red Bull Salzburg.

Beck is one of three players from last year’s Blackburn side who have rejoined Eustace, along with experienced duo Danny Batth and Andi Weimann. And, of course, no surprise to see Birmingham defender Dion Sanderson in the crowd. That speaks to how well this manager is able to get a group of players together, enjoying their work, buying into his methods, and running the hard yards required to succeed in this league. It only makes it all the more frustrating that having groomed him to be our manager for the thick end of four years under Steve McClaren and Mark Warburton we then allowed him to leave W12 because of a short term personality clash with people who are no longer even here themselves and went for Mick Beale instead.

How different things might have been for us if we’d stuck with, and how different they look for Derby now versus 12 months ago.

Manager: John Eustace Knows what he’s doing.

Oppo View – Ollie Wright (@DerbyCountyBlog) “The way you called it last summer was bang on. The strikers we signed… Jerry Yates was the invisible man, Kayden Jackson very much a Paul Warne lower league player, all pace and not a lot else to add. It’s a miracle we survived really. It was like a wake after the Millwall game, Eustace had lost his first three games without scoring. Great manager to bring in, real coup from Blackburn, but I didn’t give him a prayer. Then we won four in a row which nobody was anticipating – winning games with Yates and Marcus Harness up front, miraculous. We scored less open play goals than any other side by a mile, an embarrassing total of 16, so we stayed up with set piece goals and being good at the back. Matt Clarke coming in to cover Eiran Cashin who we sold at the top of his value was a rare bit of good business from Derby.

“There was some money from Cashin. We do wonder if there has been some investment in the background. There’s nothing concrete in that, it’s all rumour and conjecture. David Clowes came in as a white knight to rescue the club, but he was a reluctant saviour and he’s always said he’s looking for further investment. We wonder if there’s something down the road. However it’s being funded what is clear is the club is a million times better position than it was two or three years ago when it came out of admin. So, to a certain extent, we’re back. It’ll be a tough season but we’re back at something approaching the level we should be.”

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

Prediction – 12th (@AnalyticsQPR 20th) Upwardly mobile under a good manager.

If you enjoy LoftforWords, please consider supporting the site through a subscription to our Patreon or tip us via our PayPal account loftforwords@yahoo.co.uk.

Pictures - Reuters Connect

Queens Park Rangers Polls