Part two of our annual look at the 23 clubs QPR will face this season takes us into the stodgy swamplands of the division’s midtable. Can any of these Championship forever stories escape long lasting purgatory, in either direction?

We’re once again joined by Steve from @LoftusIQ for his takes and predictions on this year’s Championship, and you can listen to the pair of us debate these 1-24 picks on our Patreon this week. Part one, which covers the favourites for relegation, is available to all three sub tiers to listen/watch now by clicking here and part two, covering the clubs we’re about to talk about here, went live this morning.

In this section…
1
2
3
4
5
6 – Millwall
7
8 – Wrexham
9
10
11 – Bristol City
12 –
13 – Derby
14 – Swansea
15 - Stoke
16 – West Brom
17 - Watford
18 - Cardiff
19 - Portsmouth
20 - Charlton
21 - Preston
22 - Blackburn
23 - Bolton
24 - Lincoln

Wrexham 25/1 (title odds)

Last Season – 7th (We said 13th +6) There’s always one (looking at you, Blackburn) who responds to a negative vibe in this preview by immediately marching out and signing eight new players, and last summer that someone was Wrexham. To be fair I was cross with myself – it was inevitable that they’d do exactly that and it should have been baked into a prediction that we got off by half a dozen places.

At this point a year ago business had consisted of solid Championship infantry – Lewis O’Brien, Kieffer Moore, Josh Windass, and the rusted husk of something that could pass for Conor Coady in the right light (though that only sustained as long as it took Rumarn Burrell to get hold of him). In the remaining weeks of the window the best part of £20m was spent on Nathan Broadhead, Callum Doyle, Ben Sheaf and Dom Hyam. These are good players at this level.

Look, I get you don’t like them. I don’t like them either. Disney FC. The media fawning over Ryan Reynolds and “Rob Mac”, which at one-point last season extended to Sky Sports having the pair on the gantry as co-commentators for coverage of their all-Welsh tie with Swansea (bet the Swansea fans absolutely loved that). The thousands upon thousands of people who’ve suddenly discovered they’re now avid Wrexham fans, bitching and moaning about ticket allocations on social media at a club lucky to pull 4,000 for home games ten years ago. It’s irritating. I get it. But they know what they’re doing these guys, or at least they employ people who do.

Development of The Racecourse Ground is struggling to keep pace with the team. The much maligned (outside North Wales) Phil Parkinson again successfully managed a new influx of players and step up a fourth level in as many years with a very solid campaign. As has been the case previously, decent foot soldiers who have been part of the climb are not immediately swept aside by the new intake and players like Ollie Rathbone really thrived – as we found to our cost when his 30 yarder completed the ridiculous 3-2 comeback win at Loftus Road in January. Another one Blackburn have somehow let slip through their fingers – his dad was an Ewood Park legend, he made 130 appearances down the road at Rochdale, he cried when he scored against them last year.

They were streaky – four wins in five through September, nine unbeaten and four wins through November, four straight victories for Christmas, another five wins bunched up around February – and ultimately ran out of puff with an FA Cup run coming to an end just as they embarked on a sequence of four wins from the final 12 to miss the play-offs by two points and one place. But they were well in contention for that end of season knockout on the final day, and that’s remarkable given how far they’ve come and how quickly.

Three promotions in a row already and so close to a fourth.

Ins >>> Anthony Patterson, 26, GK, Sunderland, £8m >>> Danny Imray, 23, RB, Palace, £5m >>> Ben Whiteman, 30, CM, Preston, £3m >>>

Outs >>> Thomas O’Connor, 27, CB, Peterborough, Free >>> Andy Cannon, 30, CM, Fleetwood, Free >>> Max Purvis, 19, CB, Bangor, Free >>> Tom Kelly, 19, CM, Bala, Free >>> Mo Faal, 23, CF, Port Vale, Loan >>> Paul Mullin, 31, CF, Rotherham, Free >>> Jay Rodriguez, 36, CF, Released >>> Callum Edwards, 20, RW, Released >>> Rueben Egan, 20, GK, Released

This Season: Business has been slower this summer. The nucleus of a good side exists here already and so far the additions have been more targeted and considered than last year’s widespread upgrade.

Danny Imray was fantastic for West Brom on loan from Palace last season and the Red Dragons have gazumped the Baggies to take the right back to the Racecourse.

They’re currently in the process of spending big money (£8m!!) on Sunderland goalkeeper Anthony Patterson which, with respect to Arthur Okonkwo, was probably needed to progress further. The xG evangelists have been keen to point to what a gross over-achievement Wrexham’s seventh place finish was versus their “underlying numbers” last season, but Okonkwo cost them goals in that run in and they likely would have faired even better with a more secure stopper. You only need to be eighth to make the play-offs this year and Patterson has been promoted twice before with Sunderland and nearly made it a hat trick with Millwall in May.

As we said a year ago, there will surely be more to come between now and September. The revenues this lot generate through sponsorship and Disney series is off the scale compared to a club like ours, and under the new PSR version of FFP in the Championship that would seem to play right into their favour. Ben Whiteman plateaued and fell out with the fans (and manager) at Preston, but as we said last year with a lot of their signings it’s a good, solid, warm body for this level.

Phil Parkinson continues to attract a fair deal of “really?” sniffiness among analysts of this division despite the rapid elevation of his team and the long service here. I guess the attitude is he can’t really fail with the money he’s had to spend. As said higher up though, I just feel with Wrexham that they employ good people in good positions and trust them to do their job with time and patience in a way I don’t really get the same vibe from the similarly bombastic American ownership at Birmingham. Parkinson was once reasonably hot property at this level when he was appointed by Hull and Charlton and does a fine job here for me.

Whether that will continue to be the case is one of the big question marks over this lot this season. The problem with a huge influx of new fans attracted by a sustained period of success, drama, and promotions, is they bring new expectations and demands. This is a Hollywood project, people are here for the Hollywood ending. Spending three, four, five years at this level consolidating, developing the ground, building the infrastructure (work continues on the new Kop behind the goal so expect a tiny away allocation in December again) would be sensible, sustainable planning, and likely fine for those who suffered 15 years of non league football. But, as we know, year after year of Preston, Blackburn, Birmingham, West Brom gets mighty dull mighty quickly. Do people start to get impatient if Wrexham regress to what I would consider a perfectly respectable 12th-15th finish this year? And does the appointment of Newcastle United's head of recruitment Steve Nickson as director of football strengthen Parkinson’s position, or weaken it?

There was an element of randomness to Wrexham’s top half push last year. The game at Loftus Road was a good example. Second best throughout, QPR playing well, a goal down in stoppage time and then five minutes later the opposition have received a red card, the goalkeeper’s flapped a corner straight to one of your players, and somebody’s hit the shot of his life into the top corner from 30 yards. These are the sorts of moments that have defined Wrexham’s meteoric rise – this is a club that once lost a play-off semi-final 5-4 at home to Grimsby Town - but the analysts don’t like them because they say they’re unsustainable. On lots of other metrics – shots faced, quality of chances faced – the Red Dragons were bloody awful last year, particularly after Christmas. They conceded 65 league goals – a dozen of the teams that finished below them had better defensive records, including relegated Oxford. Anthony Patterson will help, but still.

Manager – Phil Parkinson Longest serving Championship manager, fourth longest in Football League (Mikel Arteta, Nigel Clough, Andy Woodman)

Oppo View – Welshtechie, Eat More Chips Podcast “We hadn’t been in the second tier since 1979 and were only there for a couple of seasons before dropping back down the ladder, so just reaching the league was like Christmas and Birthday had all come at once. We just didn’t want to get embarrassed and give all the ‘Disney FC’ haters fuel for their social media rants. Yes, we spent big, but that was only to try and bring us up to speed with the established sides in the league. We just hoped we’d not get relegated.

“The bookies have us between sixth and eighth, the Wrexham haters wish we were dead, although thanks to Southampton cheating, we’re not top of the hate list. I’ve predicted we’ll miss the playoffs again and finish ninth, which is still a top-half finish but would be seen by many as a failure, considering how much we’ve spent and may well see us looking for a new manager for 2027/28. Much now rests on who Phil brings in this window and in the January window.”

Prediction: 8th (@LoftusIQ 9th) I don’t know. They're one of the ones I’m very unsure about. I’m placing them in the final play-off spot basically because I expect more money to be spent and more players to arrive in the next few weeks as they did last season when I called them too low.

Derby 35/1

Last Season – 8th (We said 12th +4) We usually count within three as a success in these things. Although Derby were four better than our call I’m still pretty happy we got them reasonably spot on. End of the day, John Eustace is not a difficult man to predict.

You’ll recall Eustace swapped then play-off chasing Blackburn for then relegation likelies Derby midway through the previous season due to his deeply held personal issues whatever they were and began life at Pride Park with a 4-0 Valentine’s Day massacre at Loftus Road in front of the Sky cameras. Cue the usual post-match shtick about getting back on the training ground with the group, getting round the group, getting a good group together, a group of lads, at the training ground, together… but it felt like a big ask. At this point the Rams had lost eight and drawn two of ten and would go on to lose two more the following week as well. I’ve said this before but… he’s not some sort of soothsayer, John Eustace. What’s he going to do lobotomise a few of them?

Well, turns out, yeh, maybe. Whatever John Eustace does have he has it in spades and it worked again. Derby randomly won four straight, including the grudge return match against Blackburn, and then won two and drew two of the next five to get over the line.

Brilliant and much-loved owner David Clowes, who picked this lot up out of the ashes of Mel Morris’ notoriously brilliant touring puppet theatre show Got The EFL On Strings, then generously financed a punchy summer shopping spree that one kind of expected given the manager had left a seventh-placed side for a third-bottom one to be part of it. I know the Venkys are pillocks, but you’re not moving to Derby to manage Jerry Yates and Kayden Jackson are you? I mean we’ve all had a drink, but still.

Championship Supermarket Sweep then, a minute and thirty from the moment Dale finishes talking, go wild in the aisles and we’re looking for Carlton Morris from Luton, Rhian Brewster from Sheff Utd, Bobby Clark from Salzburg and as many players that John Eustace has worked with before as you can fit in the trolley. Get five and we’ll give you an extra four loanees in January plus this free Dion Sanderson. Danny Batth, Lewis Travis, Andi Weimann, Ben Brereton Diaz and Owen Beck. Congratulations, you’ve done it.

They also spent £5m+ on US international striker Patrick Agyemang (not that one) which felt like a really ambitious bit of business.

And so, off they set. Bit of a slow start but don’t worry about that here come QPR with a helpful leg up at Pride Park. West Brom 0-1 Derby, Derby 1-0 QPR, Derby 1-0 Norwich, Derby 1-0 Middlesbrough, Preston 0-1 Derby. Can you guess what it is yet? Derby 2-1 Hull. Blackburn 1-2 Derby. Charlton 1-2 Derby. Group. Group of lads. Together as a group. At the training ground. Group together at the training ground.

Catching Bristol City at a nice time in January proved to be something of a seasonal moment for them. Live on Sky the Rams produced an electric performance and 5-0 win. Suddenly you started to wonder. Maybe I’m wrong about this soothsayer thing? Swansea, Blackburn, Sheff Wed, Portsmouth, Birmingham, Stoke and QPR (again, of course) were all knocked over on the run in. The Rams subscribing to the Flavio Briatore manifesto of doing away with draws entirely -win or lose, you get much further much faster. Draw or lose, it’s just one point. Who cares?

When Sammie Szmodics (because you can’t get the band back together without the lead guitar, can you?) put them 1-0 up five minutes into the final day game against Sheff Utd, Derby occupied the final play off place. Although they didn’t see that through to midafternoon, this represented a very creditable season of progress.

Ins >>> Bobby Clark, 21, CM, Salzburg, £7m >>> Filip Bibija, 26, LW, Paderborn, Free >>> Charlie Taylor, 32, LB, Southampton, Free

Outs >>> Ben Osborn, 31, CM, Stockport, Free >>> Callum Elder, 31, LB, Lincoln, Free >>> Jake Rooney, 22, CB, Boston, Free >>> Andreas Weimann, 34, CF, Released >>> Danny Batth, 35, CB, Millwall, Free >>> Dajaune Brown, 20, CF, Rochdale, Loan

This Season: The good news is the heavy lifting and spending was done to a large extent last summer. There is nothing like the 2025 rebuild required here and there is a much stronger trunk to hang trinkets off this time around. Zetterstrom in goal and Matt Clarke at centre back is, as we’ve seen, handy foundation work. The price paid to make Bobby Clark’s move from Salzburg permanent is chunky, but worthwhile based on his availability and impact in year one and a significant coup for the club. The group is here. Together. On the training ground.

The difficulty, and the reason we’ve marked the Rams down for a small regression year-on-year, lies in their dramatic 3-2 win at Loftus Road in April. QPR were playing well, and leading, in that game, with Daniel Bennie producing his best performance for the club and a couple of goals registered to go with a steady catalogue of missed opportunities. It spun round dramatically into a 3-2 away win over the final 20 minutes and it did so because after an hour Eustace brought on David Ozoh and Jayden Banel – loanees from Palace and Burnley who are back with their parent clubs at press time.

Derby did terrific business in the loan market last year, and have made the moves of Clark and Sammie Szmodics permanent this summer, but the likes of Beck, Banel, Ozoh, Brereton have moved on along with some general squad thinning of the likes of Ben Osborn, Callum Elder, Danny Batth, Liam Thompson, Andi Weimann etc.

There is loads of time left in the window, and the Rams have shown with the money spent on people like Clark and Agyemang (not that one) that they’re not afraid to lash out on the right player, but you do just wonder how much of their load they’ve spunked already and how much is left to come. It’s a situation exacerbated by unicorn-like saintly owner Clowes trying to hand the club over to a Saudi Arabian consortium (what could possibly go wrong with that, nice early test for the independent football regulator right there) and perhaps feeling he’s done enough at this point spend wise only for them to pull out on the eve of the season. Agyemang blowing out his Achilles just before a home World Cup was dreadful news for him personally, and not much better for the Rams who won’t see him this side of Christmas for sure.

Eustace cut a frustrated figure after a 1-0 pre-season defeat at Burton that lacked intensity, becoming the first man in history to use the word ‘compete’ 60 times in 60 seconds, and comes across as someone who knows they’re short at this stage. Lincoln won here in the League Cup. They’ll do alright, because he’s their manager and there’s more business surely to be done, but Derby won only one of their first 12 games last year and it wouldn’t surprise me to see another slow start.

The group is here, together, on the training ground, as a group. Whether it’s a good enough group for the play offs, I have my doubts.

Manager – John Eustace Soothsayer.

Oppo View Ollie Wright @DerbyCountyBlog

Prediction: 13th (@LoftusIQ 13th)

Millwall 40/1

Last Season – 3rd (We said 6th +3) A ninth consecutive season in the Championship and having finished eighth on four previous occasions, and suffered a mental final day meltdown against Blackburn where a 3-1 lead and top six finish quickly melted into a 4-3 defeat, it turned out to be the year Millwall finally broke into the play-offs for the first time at this level since 2002.

Steve Gallen’s excellent work as director of football has produced sellable assets, and with the money from the likes of Japhet Tanganga and Zian Flemming have come new stars like Tristan Crama and Mihailo Ivanovic. Consequently, the team has got better and stronger under the ever shrewd management of Alex Neil, not worse, for its departures. No team kept more clean sheets last year, nobody won more points away from home, and when the Lions were able to go to fellow promotion chasers Ipswich and Middlesbrough and get positive results in the run in it looked like an automatic place might be on the cards for a club that hasn’t played top flight football since 1991.

Millwall like to make a thing of their “never get too high with the highs or low with the lows” dressing room spirit. Our former charge Mass Luongo, appearing on BBC London towards the end of the season, laughed at the notion that they’d be looking at other results and watching their rivals play in the run in. “You don’t know a Millwall dressing room, mate”. Just so laid back. So cool. Checking the league table’s for losers mate. But just how strong was that mentality? Poor performances and draws against divisional strugglers West Brom and Leicester proved costly on the run in – the Lions missed second by just one point. They lost at home to Blackburn too, although given Gavin Ward was having one of his special out-of-body experiences with the whistle you can perhaps forgive them that slip.

Ward, scandalously, was then given their semi-final away at Hull and responded by disallowing Millwall’s winner with exactly the sort of soft shit decision which should preclude him from every officiating at this level but apparently instead qualifies him for play-off football now. There could, however, be no complaining about the outcome of the second leg. Alex Neil, usually so astute, tried to open his team up to push for a win in the final half hour, and no sooner had Alfie Doughty gone on for Zak Sturge at left back than Hull ran straight through that space and bagged two goals. Making the surprise move to switch to a back three they’d rarely used previously, Hull boss Sergej Jakirović rather showed Neil his own arse and so it was the Tigers, four places and ten points further back on the league ladder, who went to Wembley instead (and won).

Ins >>> Mathis Servais, 21, AM, Mechelen, £3m >>> Tairyk Arconte, 22, CF, Rodez, £2.5m >>> Elkan Baggott, 23, CB, Ipswich, £1m >>> Mark Sykes, 28, RM, Bristol City, Free >>> Jenson Metcalfe, 21, CM, Bradford, Undisclosed >>> Kyrell Lisbie, 22, LW, Peterborough, Undisclosed >>> Danny Batth, 35, CB, Derby, Free >>> Lyndon Dykes, 30, CF, Charlton, Free

Outs >>> Macaulay Langstaff, 29, CF, Salford, £750k >>> Billy Mitchell, 25, DM, Sheff Wed, Free >>> Danny McNamara, 27, RB, Charlton, Free >>> Wes Harding, 29, CB, Plymouth, Free >>> Adam Mayor, 21, LB, Hibs, Undisclosed >>> Barry Bannan, 36, CM, Sheff Wed, Undisclosed >>> Joe Bryan, 32, LB, Released >>> Kamarl Grant, 23, CB, Bromley, Loan

This Season: Millwall’s summer recruitment works some well-worn themes that have gone well for them in the recent past.

Despite last season’s failed dalliance with Barry Bannan, Millwall continue to place great stock in Championship experience. Massimo Luongo was initially released this summer after the ACL blow out he suffered at Loftus Road in October, but he has now been re-signed. Veteran centre back Danny Batth did enough in pre-season training to earn a deal following his release at Derby. Mark Sykes also arrives from Bristol City.

Shopping on the continent has turned up some big Casper De Norre, Zian Flemming and Mihailo Ivanovic-shaped success stories for Steve Gallen as director of football and he’ll be hoping to add Tairyk Arconte and Mathis Servais to that strike rate – the latter of whom has impressed in pre-season but is now unfortunately injured. De Norre, meanwhile, enters the last year of his contract so watch out for some movement there one way or another.

Ipswich’s Thai-born centre back Elkan Baggott will hope to make the same impact Tristan Crama has since moving here from Brentford and Tottenham’s Japhet Tanganga did previously while Jenson Metcalfe and Kyrell Lisbie (son of one of QPR’s less successful loanees) mirrors a ‘best of League One’ approach that previously brought keeper Lukas Jensen here from Lincoln.

As the squad renewal continues apace another thigs that’s noticeable is most of the outgoings are heading down a division. Billy Mitchell, Barry Bannan (both Sheff Wed), Wes Harding (Plymouth) and Macaulay Langstaff (Salford) all step down while one-time Mick Beale transfer target Danny McNamara makes an, at best, sideways move to Charlton. All have been reasonable mainstays of the first team here over recent years. Millwall, in theory, getting incrementally better with each deal.

And yet here they are at 40/1 to be promoted, longer odds than Derby, Wrexham, Norwich, Birmingham, Sheff Utd… There is just a nagging doubt that to expend so much effort making last season’s play-offs only for it to turn into a damp squib in the semi-final there may just be a hangover here. There were doubts in goal where Jensen hasn’t played for a year and Max Crocombe fails to inspire, but Jensen certainly put paid to those with his heroics in W12 on Saturday. The team’s brilliant right sided defender Crama has gone under the knife on the eve of the new season. New boy Servais is also already injured and star striker Ivanovic broke his foot in pre-season. They’ve given Lyndon Dykes a one-year deal to cover the latter (weird nobody thinks to just have him for five years in case he gets service).

As a lot of Middlesbrough types start splashing the cash those doubts will only increase if last season’s star boy Femi Azeez gets a late window move. It could be a more slow burn start to this campaign, and after the way the second leg against Hull played out it’ll be interesting to see if that leads to any dissenting voices. But, listen, as we saw on Saturday, that’s some centre back pairing in Cooper and Taylor with Crama still to come, and it’s a team that knows its shape and system to a tee.

Oh, and here’s a fun thought. Millwall are splitting the North Stand/away end of the ground this year between home and away fans. Upper and lower tier? Oh no, they’re going lengthways down the middle. Should be an absolute (laugh) riot.

Manager – Alex Neil Moley, moley, moley.

Oppo View – Lucas Ball @LucasBall2211 “A brilliant season to follow but equally gutting at that last moment to miss out on automatic promotion and then to lose in such a disappointing manner in the play-offs. Alex Neil proved he’s a great fit for us and this level again - he’d already done that in his first six months in many ways but it was then about re-producing that form over a season.

“It’s been a busy summer at The Den. We've continued our continental recruitment policy picking up the highly prominent Servais and Arconte. We've added some experience in Sykes as well as the highly prominent Metcalfe from Bradford. In terms of players leaving we’re still bracing ourselves for a big bid for Azeez and if he goes that would trigger a number of other deals.....if Azeez stays then I think we're just about done. As ever we seem to be beset with injuries so we may see some loans come in.”

Prediction: 6th (@LoftusIQ 4th)

Stoke 50/1

Last Season – 17th (We said 17th -) God, I love Stoke.

Not the place, obviously. Or the hideously expensive, entirely unreliable train that takes us there. I like The Glebe, but not the Premier Inn, on Valentine’s Night, after a 1-0 loss, when they shut the bar at 10pm, defying the whole point of any sane person ever staying in a Premier Inn in the first fucking place. Not Ben Pearson of course, or that bastard hill the ground is on, or the incessant, biting, bestial wind.

None of that, but when you’ve got 23 of these things to write and it’s getting late in the day and the opening round is looming and TransferMarkt.com is down again it’s really, really valuable to have something you can just rely on to be as terminally shit as they always have been before and seemingly always will be for the rest of time. A team where you can just take what you wrote the previous season, copy and paste it across, change the names, slap a mid-teen place on the prediction, tick the whole thing off in ten minutes and never think of them again bar our inevitable victory at Loftus Road and theirs at The Bet365 Temple a little bit later on.

Each summer they’ll sign a tonne of players, and some of those might even be Sorba Thomas who you think is really quite good. But then you remember the guy signing those players is Jon Walters, whose sole qualification for the role is he used to run up and down on the same patch of grass a while ago while a bloke in a tracksuit and baseball cap combo yawped “Go on Jon!” at him by way of tactical input.

Sometimes they’ll go off at a bit of a lick and have you worried for a while. The Potters won their first three league games last season and then another four out of five in October including a 5-1 pasting of Bristol City. But the decay sets in sooner or later. Alex Neil has done well wherever he’s been, promoted with Sunderland and Norwich and now in the play-offs with Millwall, but barely lasted a year here. Steven Schumacher has been promoted with two of his three clubs so far, but Stoke was the other one. Gary Rowett, Nathan Jones, Michael O’Neill… all significant achievements elsewhere, but never here. And now we find Mark Robins, greatest manager in Coventry City’s history, grumpily referring to his players as “that lot” as they lose five out of six through November, win one of 12 games to start 2026, and limp home with three wins from their final 22 matches in all comps. City lost five and drew one of the final six games, and failed to score more than once in any of them. Seventeenth again ole ole.

The stat everybody throws at you about Stoke is they’ve been in this league for eight straight years now and never once finished in the top half of it (16th, 15th, 14th, 14th, 16th, 17th, 18th, 17th). Here’s another I’ll leave you with… Over the last four seasons Stoke have failed to get into double figures for home wins once. Of the 92 home league games they have played over the past four seasons they have lost 35 of those and drawn another 26.

Ins >>> Ethan Galbraith, 25, CM, Swansea, £8m >>> Milan Smit, 23, CF, Go Ahead Eagles, £4m >>> Djibril Soumare, 23, DM, Braga, £3m >>> Luke Graham, 22, CB, Dundee, £2m >>> Svante Ingelsson, 28, CM, Sheff Wed, £1m >>> Josh Griffiths, 24, GK, West Brom, Undisclosed

Outs >>> Lewis Baker, 31, CM, Bursaspor, Free >>> Tommy Simkin, 21, GK, Doncaster, Loan >>> Emre Tezgel, 20, CF, Wycombe, Loan >>> Nathan Lowe, 20, CF, Hibs, Loan >>> True Grant, 20, GK, Halifax, Loan >>> Nikola Jojic, 22, RW, Released >>> Steven Nzonzi, 37, DM, Released

This Season: If it does all happen that way again this season then Stoke may truly be beyond hope.

They have a manager who has proven himself to be a safe pair of hands as a bare minimum, and often a very successful leader, even allowing for the niggling doubt that Ade Viveash (now assisting Kim Hellberg at Boro) might have had rather more to do with the meteoric rise of Coventry than was ever publicly let on. Robins is entering a second full year in charge so there is at least stability at a club where every one of eight predecessors back to Tony Pulis was chopped and/or changed in the middle of a season. He felt largely checked out by the end of last season though. Mark Robins has never figured too highly on anybody’s list of top five dinner guests, but Christ by April I was wondering whether we were going to need to take his toaster away from him.

Stoke have always seemed to operate in a different financial system to the rest of us mugs, reporting abnormally high revenues by sticking their owners’ Bet365 brand on everything from replica shirts to hand dryers and happily spending away on players while only very seldom getting any serious money for any of them in return – Harry Souttar £12m in 2023 the last person they got north of £5m for. Our new SCR overlord seems to have taken the handbrake off this entirely. Stoke, even by their standards, are heaving money at this problem this summer.

Ethan Galbraith was available for £1m from Leyton Orient a year ago, but why do that then when you can spend £10m on him now? Svante Ingelsson comes into midfield for a £1m from Sheff Wed. Luke Graham has cost twice that from Dundee. They’re offering another £10m for Ipswich’s Sid from Toy Story look-a-like George Hirst. Really, George Hirst, £10m? Ipswich are so stunned they’re offering to chuck Harry Clarke in for another £3.5m on top. This is like buying meat off the back of a wagon. Chuck in a pig’s dick for the dog.

We’ve said it before but Stoke are the club who buy a sofa from DFS when there isn’t a sale on. A monkey throwing darts at a phone book would have a better hit rate than this lot. Hell, a dart throwing monkey would be a better signing than the ones they make.

Viktor Johansson is a brilliant goalkeeper. Sorba Thomas is handy, and still here at press time. But apart from that, my God, these guys.

Manager – Mark Robins Great sack race bet.

Oppo View – Rob Doolan @PulisvBojan “Last season started really promisingly, and we were still in the play off mix at the turn of the year, then it all dissolved into the usual dreary mess we’ve seen every year since promotion. A huge injury list didn’t help, but Mark Robins seemed to check out as things got worse. He was referring to the players as ‘this lot’ by the end of the season.

“I don’t have high hopes for the season. I’d be shocked if we end it without changing the manager (again) and after years of fluttering our eyelashes at relegation it’s not out of the question that it finally claims us this year…”

Prediction: 15th (@LoftusIQ 15th)

West Brom 50/1

Last Season – 21st (We said 9th -12) Carlos Corberan was always a darling of these previews, regularly lifting a pretty mediocre West Brom side into the top half of the table and play-off contention. We used to say the Spaniard was worth six positions to this lot on the league table. Turns out we were wrong. It was more.

The Baggies started last season in the brave new era of Ryan Mason, who’d diligently sewn all his coaching badges onto his sleeve and even taken caretaker charge of mighty Tottenham during one of their not altogether infrequent meltdowns. Problem was, did Ryan Mason know what sort of manager he wanted to be? Were West Brom an attacking side, or a defensive one? Did they like and want possession, or not? Four at the back, or three? I couldn’t tell, and neither it seems could Ryan Mason. Summer defeats at League One sides Lincoln and Blackpool stretched the “don’t read anything into pre-season” excuse to its limit.

They actually started pretty well – three wins and a draw in the first four, including an awayer at Disney FC. They were also one of the lucky sides to catch Norwich early on and won 1-0 at Carrow Road accordingly. But the away wins quickly dried up. By the time they were comfortably beaten 3-1 at Loftus Road in early December they’d lost seven of eight on the road and the run would eventually stretch to 14 losses and three draws. Mason was a Christmas casualty – West Brom lost four and won only one of their festive fixtures (guess who) and bombed him out on January 6.

The general consensus seemed to be at this point that it had perhaps been a little bit too much, too soon for an inexperienced manager and what was needed now was a more senior man just to steer the ship into port ahead of a reassessment in the summer. Step forward… Eric Ramsay. A career coach and futsal player whose only managerial experience prior was at Minnesota United. Bold strategy Coton, let’s see how it works out for them.

You know those viral videos where people put a Mento in a bottle of Coke and immediately regret it? Ramsay lost his second game, at home to Norwich, 5-0. By the time we reached March West Brom had won one of 18 games (guess who) and none of 15. Ramsay was sacked after just nine, with no victories. He’ll go down as the club’s worst ever boss, and this is a club who won three of 21 games under Pards Pardew.

Having been seven above the drop zone when Ramsay arrived, by this stage only a point separated them from a league game with Bromley. Long serving player-turned-coach James Morrison felt a desperate last punt at survival and when they lost his first game in charge at Oxford and he spent his post-match heaving the players under the team bus in front of the media I think somebody somewhere was tolling a bell.

To be fair to Morrison, though, he got the job done with something to spare. The players responded to his straight talking. It wasn’t always pretty – six draws in the final 11 games – but wins to nil against Preston, Bristol City, Hull and Watford were enough to seal 21st position and survival by four points. They kept seven clean sheets in the last nine games which tells you a lot about what Morrison prioritised, but lost 2-1 on the final day at Sheff Wed which says much about the work he’s got ahead of him.

With a controversial April points deduction thrown in as a late grenade by the EFL too, this was an all-round very lucky escape.

Ins >>> Felix Horn Mhyre, 27, CM, Brann, £2.5m >>> Barney Stewart, 22, CF, Falkirk, £1m >>> Jimmy-Jay Morgan, 20, CF, Chelsea Puppy Farm, £1m >>> Nolan Galves, 23, RB, Rodez, £1m >>> Conor Townsend, 33, LB, Ipswich, Free >>> Matt Ingram, 32, GK, Oxford, Undisclosed >>> Rabby Nzingoula, 20, DM, Strasbourg, Undisclosed

Outs >>> Karlan Grant, 28, CF, Charlton, Free >>> Jed Wallace, 32, RW, Bristol City, Free >>> Daryl Dike, 26, CF, Orlando Magic, Free >>> Josh Griffiths, 24, GK, Stoke, Undisclosed >>> Joe Wildsmith, 30, GK, Released

This Season: I’ve never been an enormous fan of making the caretaker manager a permanent appointment based on a few new-manager-bounce style results, but such was the scale of Morrison’s turnaround from Ramsay and Mason in 25/26 you’d have been hard pushed not to give him a swing at this and any other new man would have been under immediate pressure for not being him. He restored a fractured relationship between players and supporters. This, though, is a tough gig.

The immediate thing that stands out to me is where the goals are going to come from. Karlan Grant is mediocre, Daryl Dike has Chinese fireworks where there should be Achilles tendons, Josh Maja is streaky, but that’s three senior forwards going out of the door with only Falkirk’s Barney Stewart and Jimmy-Jay Morgan from the Chelsea puppy farm coming in.

To be fair Norwegian Aune Heggebo, scorer of a gorgeous flying header in W12 last December, remains and if last summer’s friendly results were an indicator of what was to come then this year the Baggies have already put four through Bromley and Shrewsbury, three through Sheff Wed and another two at Peterborough. Morgan has had a terrific pre-season and scored twice in another four goal haul at Rotherham in the League Cup. He might be a real find.

Recruitment has been ropey here for years and another big summer transfer target has been missed. They loved Danny Imray on loan from Palace last season but Wrexham have blown them out of the water for the Palace full back. Instead, statistical darling Nolan Galves arrives from Rodez having been chased by every Championship club that does their recruitment by staring at FotMob (we had his QPR signing piece written and ready to go here a month ago).

The goalkeeping has been a problem here since Alex Palmer’s departure. Joe Wildsmith is not Championship standard and has been released. Josh Griffiths might be, but an unhappy 25/26 ends in a cut price move to Stoke. I’m surprised Matt Ingram is willing to go within 500 miles of The Hawthorns ever again after what happened there during his time with us. Max O’Leary came in from Bristol City and starts as first choice. Uninspiring.

West Brom have an owner here, Shilen Patel, who has credit in the bank for rescuing the club from malignant tumour Guochuan Lai who’d driven the club to the brink of insolvency while withdrawing money from it like an ATM to prop up his other Covid-afflicted businesses. He inherited the Championship’s second oldest squad, and no FFP room to do anything about it. It has taken time to shift big earners like John Swift, Jed Wallace, Grant, Dike and others who were all on ridiculous contracts here with no sell on value. There’s a good deal of understanding that Patel has been fighting fires not of his causing, as highlighted by the points deduction that threatened to drag them under in April. What sellable assets they have had have indeed been sold – Darnell Furlong, Tom Fellows, Alex Palmer.

However, many more idealistic project missteps like Mason and Ramsay and the grumpy locals will start getting very restless. This is a club that from 2000 to 2021 never finished lower than sixth in the Championship, and spent 13 of those years in the Premier League. They’ve now been in this league for five years and fifth, ninth, 21st over the last three of those is not a promising direction of travel.

A first Black Country derby with Wolves in the league since 2021/21 will get the juices flowing a bit. Saturday September 20 is the first of those.

Manager – James Morrison Looked great dressed as a fireman, now try these builder’s overalls on for size.

Oppo View – Matt Graham @SA HistoryMatt

Prediction: 16th (@LoftusIQ 18th) NotTheTop20 Podcast have this lot eighth.

Swansea 66/1

Last Season – 11th (We said 15th +4) Perhaps a cautionary tale for West Brom can be found in our next team, Swansea City.

This time a year ago they were gearing up for life under the permanent charge of Alan Sheehan. Post Russell Martin’s death-by-a-thousand-passes process era in South Wales, twice the club had tried to go for promising lower league progressives and twice – in Michael Duff and Luke Williams – it had ended in a frustrated, acrimonious, niggly relationship with supporters and a mid-season change.

Twice Sheehan was brought in as caretaker, and in his second post-Williams stint he really got the Swans flying high with a five-game winning streak which included four clean sheets and – because of course – a late season win at Loftus Road. This the same Swansea team that had lost eight and drawn one of ten just a few weeks before, how could you not give him the job permanently? They missed out on Kim Hellberg in the process but, look, don’t worry, we’re revamping the coaching staff around him at the same time.

Theirs was a deeply uninspiring start to last season. Just four league wins by the end of the November, and even those only coming in the midst of the respective crises taking place at that time at Sheff Utd under Ruben Selles, Norwich under Liam Manning, Blackburn under Valerian Ismael, and Sheff Wed. There was a mindless red card for Malick Yalcouye which perhaps skewed our 1-0 win in South Wales, but QPR (a team that would win just two of its final 15 away games in 25/26) won that game in third gear at most. A routine, midweek, 1-0 home loss in a half empty and totally silent stadium to one of the division’s most notoriously bad travellers. Sheehan was gone by mid-November amidst a run of five straight defeats in which the Swans shipped 14 goals.

This is a club that has been getting its recruitment of players and managers wrong for a long time and as they went into six pointers with Pompey and Oxford to start December I did start to wonder whether this would finally tell in a relegation to League One. However, two bits of hiring did then come good for them. Vitor Matos, a 38-year-old coach who seemed to trade quite a lot off being part of Jurgen Klopp’s staff for a while in 2019, arrived having only previously managed Maritimo (and even that not for very long) looking like the sort of hilariously inept final act clubs like this let out before finally sinking beneath the waves. The final, forlorn death call of a dying whale. Or Swan. Then they won five of their next seven games and kept clean sheets in four of those.

Up front, Zan Vipotnik grew into a breakout year. Little noise about him after seven goals in 24/25, but he exploded in 25/26 with 28 for club and country which now make him one of the division’s hottest properties. This included a ridiculous spring streak of eight goals in seven games culminating in (guess who) one in another 2-1 win at Loftus Road. Very QPR to go to Slovenia and come back with the wrong striker called Zan (the wrong Zan Grommit, we’ve got the wrong Zan).

Swansea were a very solid proposition by the end of last season. Well coached, high press, hard running side – impressive to turn that around midseason without a pre-season or summer transfer window. Not very ‘Swansea way’, but football trends have shifted, and Luke Williams’ failure here is instructive in that.

They lost only one of their final seven games and secured a top half finish, landing ultimately in 11th.

Ins >>> Joseph Opoku, 20, LW, Zulte Waregem (Belgium), £5m >>> Elijah Just, 26, AM, Motherwell, £5m >>> Leo Walta, 23, AM, Sirius (Sweden), £3m >>> Stephen Welsh, 26, CB, Celtic, Free >>> Moussa Yeo, 22, RW, Salzburg, Undisclosed >>> Ross Stewart, 30, CF, Southampton, Free >>> Tiago Parente, 20, LB, Benfica, Loan

Outs >>> Ethan Galbraith, 25, CM, Stoke, £8m >>> Cameron Congreave, 22, RW, Westerlo, £1m >>> Liam Cullen, 27, AM, Leicester, Undisclosed >>> Josh Thomas, 23, CF, Fleetwood, Free >>> Ricardo Santos, 31, CB, Sheff Wed, Undisclosed >>> Sam Parker, 20, CB, Wycombe, Loan >>> Oli Cooper, 26, AM, Notts County, Loan >>> Joel Ward, 36, LB, Released

This Season: Once seen as a model club for others to follow having climbed from bottom division to top, established in the Premier League with a League Cup and a European campaign into the bargain, there’s been a lot of dumb stuff go on here as they’ve descended back down to the middle of this division.

The club is now owned by Americans Brett Cravatt and Jason Cohen who are attempting to turn round years of mismanagement. So far they have followed the never tiresome model of Surprise Minority Investors, each more surprising than the last. See your Tom Brady and raise you Luka Modric. Is that Martha Stewart up there in the director’s box? Preston manager Paul Heckingbottom objected to his team having to rip through the aftermath of a weapons grade bifta when Snoop Dog came to town – mind you, if anybody could do with blazing a fat one and cheering the fuck up it’s Paul Hecdkingbottom.

This menagerie has overseen a somewhat awkward summer at the Liberty Stadium. Ethan Galbraith, who we correctly picked out a year ago as a terrific signing from Leyton Orient, has, for reasons best known to himself, moved to Stoke. Big money and a quickfire profit has been made, but that doesn’t help their team much in the short term and the strike force will be similarly damaged when the inevitable desperate parachute payment club comes calling for Vipotnik at some point between now and the end of the month. At the moment Hull are about £10m shy of the Swans’ valuation, bidding £10m to this point.

Haphazard recruitment should improve for a partnership with Tony Bloom’s analytics company and the arrival of Ben Stevens as sporting director from Crystal Palace. Southampton’s released striker Ross Stewart is here as a Vipotnik replacement, but is held together with elastic bands and chewing gum. Might be a good time for Adam Idah to start justifying his chunky transfer fee from Celtic. Their best swing at replacing Galbraith seems to be New Zealand international Elijah Just, who had a good World Cup on the back of starring in Motherwell’s surprise ascent up the SPL table last year. The aptly named Stephen Welsh comes in from Celtic, but was also on loan at Fir Park last year. You can tell the clubs using the data sets as a recruitment driver.

There’s a good permanent goalkeeper here in Lawrence Vigouroux, revelling in finally being a first choice number one in his own right. Josh Key is a quality full back despite struggles in 25/26, but with one-year left on his deal there’s no guarantee he’s still here September 1. Josh Tymon on the other side has a lot to like about him. Former Ipswich left sided defender Cameron Burgess has developed a nice line in own goals – his centre back partnership with Ben Cabango could most kindly be described as steady, and Burgess is injured for the start of the season.

Patience is wearing thin with Ronald – more the fast food clown than the Brazilian great at this point - and the wings have been a focus of significant transfer activity. Perennial Palace loanee Jesurun Rak-Sakyi might follow Stevens across from Selhurst Park in that area. Eom Ji-Sung could be the league’s big breakout star this year. Franco is reliable in the middle of the park, but has also picked up an injury in pre-season. Widell has a lot of improvement in him in year two.

Swansea have been stuck between tenth and 15th since losing the play-off final under Steve Cooper and will do well to improve on that if Vipotnik follows Galbraith out the door – two big losses for a midtable side.

Manager – Vitor Matos Strong like bull.

Oppo View Steven Carroll @StevenSOS19871 Last season started badly but things picked up from December onwards after Vitor Matos took the job and we once again ended up in mid table. Matos improved us defensively and we were far harder to beat under him. The question now is can he improve us on the ball, last term we weren’t great at creating chances but scored a lot of worldies, that won’t happen again so it needs to get better

I think we’ll either do well and be in the hunt for lower reaches of the playoffs, or we’ll be in lower mid table which would put the managers job in danger. After the money spent the ownership are likely to want top eight.”

Prediction: 14th (@LoftusIQ 11th) If Vipotnik sticks around and fires again, or is adequately replaced, then this will likely be too low.

Bristol City 66/1

Last Season – 12th (We said 12th -) It was always likely to be a tricky season for Bristol City to navigate in the wake of their sixth placed finish and crash-and-burn play-off semi-final with Sheff Utd the year before, with the manager who took them there heading off to Norwich. Still, I doubt many had the Robins exhuming Roy Hodgson on their Ashton Gate bingo card for 25/26.

Former Barnsley boss Gerhard Struber, bizarrely fired by Cologne two games before their Bundesliga 2 promotion was confirmed the year before, initially seemed like a good fit – perhaps even a step up on Manning who subsequently showed at Norwich and then Huddersfield that, tragically, he should be nowhere near a football dugout at the moment. They lost two of their first 12, exacted immediate revenge on the Blades with a 4-1 opening day win at Bramall Lane, put another four through Hull and trounced Southampton at Ashton Gate. There were three wins out of four over Christmas as well, including a 5-0 shellacking of Portsmouth. When this side clicked, it really did click – Watford were beaten 5-1 in the FA Cup.

Things, however, started to go awry through a January in which star boy Anis Mehmeti was flogged to Ipswich for a fairly meagre £3m. With Zak Vyner allowed to head to Wrexham as well, it looked from the outside like the Robins were rather giving up on their year. It felt like that internally too – Struber started getting uppity in press conferences, and the locals started to turn on owner Steve Lansdown. This is a chairman who has secured hitherto League One City in the Championship, overseen a spectacular redevelopment of Ashton Gate into one of the division’s best grounds, and built the club a brilliant new training ground but, as ourselves and Preston are finding, boredom is a powerful motivator and after 11 years in the Championship people are most definitely getting bored here. A 5-0 homer to John Eustace’s Derby acted as unhelpful accelerant.

Struber went at the end of March with the team on a six-game winless streak which included an FA Cup exit at Port Vale (attention managers and football clubs, cup results do matter). There then came one of those moments the Championship seems to throw up more than most divisions, where a news alert comes through and you have to verify it elsewhere and check it’s not April 1. Roy Hodgson, at 78, would be taking City for the rest of the season. There quickly followed a shuttle disaster press conference which Hodgson used to remind City that he’d never actually received compensation for the last time they sacked him in 1982 (!!). Asked if he’d be sticking around for 26/27 he said he was “too old for all this” and if his experience might be leant to the club’s search for a director of football he said he “didn’t understand what one of those was”.

Big start, then. From there Wibbly Woy wibbled his way thwough in exactly the way you would have expected – bar a 4-2 home loss to Norwich City were difficult to beat, difficult to score against, and difficult to watch. Three wins, two draws, two defeats, and a 0-0 draw at Loftus Road to harden the arteries. Everyone here, you sensed, glad to get the season over and the summer underway.

Ins >>> Lorent Tolaj, 24, CF, Plymouth, £4m >>> Lisav Naif Eissat, 21, CB, Maccabi Haifa, £2m >>> Sam Greenwood, 24, AM, Pogon Szczecin (Poland), £2m >>> Dom Ballard, 21, CF, Orient, Undisclosed >>> Jed Wallace, 32, RW, West Brom, Free >>> Brad Collins, 29, GK, Coventry, Free >>> Gibson Yah, 22, DM, Volendam (Netherlands), Undisclosed >>> Sam Tickle, 24, GK, Wigan, Undisclosed >>> Billy O’Neill, 18, CF, Bray Wanderers, Undisclosed

Outs >>> Sinclair Armstrong, 23, CF, Goztepe, £1.5m >>> Ross McCrorie, 28, RB, Rangers, £1m >>> Mark Sukes, 28, RM, Millwall, Free >>> Joe Lumley, 31, GK, Sheff Wed, Free >>> Josh Stokes, 22, AM, Reading, Loan >>> Harry Cornick, 31, CF, Released >>> Sam Morsy, 34, CM, Released >>> Jamie Knight-Lebel, 21, CB, Motherwell, Loan

This Season: A bit of freshening up and change required in the red half of Bristol then, to put it mildly.

Charlie Boss (clue's in the name), formerly with Southampton and The Jockey Club, is the new CEO. Brian “all over bar the shouting” Tinnion is leaving after 35 years with the club in one capacity or another, most recently technical director, and the long search for a director of football has landed with former Arsenal technical director James Ellis. His first job was to hire a permanent manager and while John Mousinho from Portsmouth felt like an awkward fit they did eventually get their first choice in Lincoln’s newly promoted Michael Skubala. Gutting for Lincoln, and those of us keen to see how he went about the task of keeping the Imps in the Championship, but very good news for City, you feel.

Skubala (English of Polish descent), former head of sport at Loughborough University and England futsal manager, is certainly a coach’s coach. Dan Ashworth had him as part of the FA set up at St George’s Park where they worked a lot on team culture – Gareth Southgate the England boss at this time of course. He arrived at Leeds just after Marcelo Bielsa left but is heavily influenced by his methods and style of play. He carried unfancied Lincoln to a 103-point title winning haul in League One last season despite losing most of his best players the summer before and competing against much spendier rivals in that league.

There’s been significant surgery to an attack that hasn’t scored more than two goals in a game in 16 attempts and failed to score at all in six of those. Lorent Tolaj (17 in 27(2) for Plymouth last season) and Dom Ballard (23 in 40 for Orient) provide a ‘best of League One’ feel to a strike force which is shorn of the comedy stylings of Sinclair Armstrong now he’s completed the most obvious move to the Turkish league since Sandro (32) left Loftus Road. Radek Vitek was a star loan goalkeeper last year and is now wearing Middlesbrough colours, so City have also dipped down a league to pick up Mr Tickle from Wigan who should at least have the arms for it. With Skubala in the dugout it is feeling rather like they’re trying to put the League One team of the year back together for real here.

Scott Twine is here, so that’s ten goals from free kicks straight away, but so too is former Leeds and Preston man Sam Greenwood, returning to these shores from Poland at just 24, who plays the same position. Key duo Jason Knight and Max Bird remain, for now, and if that’s the case come the first week of September this is a good, steady, Championship side. Any more than that will probably depend on whether Tolaj and Ballard’s prolific scoring from the third tier can translate into the second. They look light at full back to me with McCrorie heading back to Scotland, and as we know Rob Dickie will always give you that grabby chance on the turn.

QPR are now unbeaten in six visits to Ashton Gate, winning five, and the Robins have implausibly conceded headed goals to Paul Smyth, Ilias Chair and Karamoko Dembele in recent past. Sadly we have to wait until March 20 for our next visit to our happiest of hunting grounds.

Manager – Michael Skubala Will be assisted by Neil Banfield and his box of ice creams.

Oppo View – Dave Featherstone @FevsFootball “You know Bristol City, the usual ups and downs ending up mid-table. So, we did just that. But the manner of the rollercoaster felt different last time around.

“I think most fans are generally optimistic too, appreciating a bit of patience will be needed. But it does feel like we are all in it together, and that can only help.”

Prediction: 11th (@LoftusIQ 14th) I’ll be honest we have juggled Swansea, Bristol City, Derby and Sheff Utd around repeatedly, right up until about two seconds before this was published.

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