Looking back to the good, the bad and the laughable from our pre-season preview predictions, with Luton, Swansea and Huddersfield notable successes, and Blackburn hopelessly wrong as always.

1st — Burnley (we said 7th, +6)

Shit we said: Like Bournemouth and West Brom before them, things are not good, but parachute payments and a handy bunch of player sales led by an eyebrow-raising £20m from Wolves for Nathan Collins means they’re not catastrophic yet as long as the Clarets go back this season or next. It’s after that things become very difficult, as West Brom may be about to find out. After ten years of Sean Dyche, who is owed anywhere up to £15m himself depending on which rag you read, the team is very set in its ways and in need of a refresh. Whether hiring Vincent Kompany and his 4-2-2-2 witchcraft, and going after the best of the EFL in the transfer market, turns out to be too much change too soon we’ll find out in time.

Burnley have gone from a settled back four of veterans in front of Nick Pope, to completely tearing that part of their team up and starting again with youngsters, which is a risk. Anderlecht’s Josh Cullen for just £2.7m is outrageous value but they’re balking at a bigger fee for Coventry’s Callum O’Hare.

Easily the most fascinating of the three relegated teams. I wonder if all this might take so long to settle down and bed in that they might be a better bet next season rather than this. But there’s still a month of transfer window left, and all the advantages we’ve already spoken about for clubs with parachute payments apply.

Our prediction: 7th A lot of change, all at once, to a system, style and ethos that had been embedded over ten years. Might be a better bet next season.

How it went down: In my defence, and I’ll be bringing this up when we get to Birmingham, writing the season preview in the first week of August is a fool’s errand. There’s a month of transfer window still left at that point, and while we were right to point out the incredible value in Josh Cullen’s arrival their big signing to this point was Posh Scott Twine who only started five games due to injury. Post publication these were dwarfed by the arrivals of Manuel Benson, Anass Zaroury, Nathan Tella and Jordan Beyer who were arguably the four best players in the division last season. The Clarets spent a wedge last season — the best part of £40m before we start counting loan fees for the likes of Taylor Harwood-Bellis from Man City — but they offset it with upwards of £60m in player sales and, crucially, made it back at the first attempt before their parachute payments started declining. Still, as we said, to go from Sean Dyche’s Britain First 4-4-2 ensemble of to this multi-cultural, free-flowing, Vincent Kompany statement piece in one summer was really something. Best team there’s been at this level for a long time.

2nd — Sheff Utd (we said 3rd, +1)

Shit we said: I was a bit non-plussed about the Blades chances this season, once bitten twice shy perhaps, until last week when they loaned in Man City midfielder Tommy Doyle, absolutely outstanding at this level in a piss weak Cardiff team last season, and Malmo defender Anel Ahmedhodzic, who at just £4m is a total steal and has no business wasting his time at this level of football really. If they’re to do what Bournemouth did and make good on promotion at the second time of asking they will have to solve two problems. The first, is their rally through to the play-off positions from the bottom half of the table last season was driven in no small part by the form and performances of Wolves’ loanee Morgan Gibbs-White, head and shoulders the best player in their team and one of the top three performers across the whole league for me. He’s gone and isn’t coming back, it’s left a hole the size of the Democratic Republic of Congo in their attack — whether Blackburn’s Reda Khadra is the answer to that I’m not sure. The second, related, point is this team is still too reliant on Billy Sharp, now 36, for its goals. We thought carrying Sharp, David McGoldrick, Rhian Brewster, Roddy McScotsman, Lys Mousset, up and comer Daniel Jeberson and others into a Championship season had the potential to blow the division away. Sharp scored 14, Gibbs-White 11, the rest didn’t make double figures collectively — Tartan McPartick had more stamps on errant Forest fans than he did goals from 28 appearances across the season. Sharp will go around again, McGoldrick and Mousset have gone, the rest have to step up, or a new face must emerge. If they do, then a spine that includes Ahmedhodzic, Doyle and Sander ‘this enormous child will devour us all’ Berge will be a significant threat.

Our prediction: 3rd Another squad I think we might be assessing a good deal more enthusiastically if we were writing at the end of the transfer window rather than halfway through it.

How it went down: Pretty much as called. They succeeded in filling the gap left by Morgan Gibbs-White, and the reliance on Old Man Sharp for their goals, by finally kickstarting Tartan McPartick (15 goals), the brilliant Iliman Ndiaye fulfilling his potential (15 more goals) and Man City’s work experience child James McAtee fussing around behind them (nine goals). Anel Ahmedhodzic did, indeed, have no business whatsoever playing in a dog league like this. There were a couple of wobbles as an extended FA Cup run piled fixtures up and Middlesbrough’s hot streak applied pressure, but they were comfortably tucked in behind runaway leaders Burnley (who they beat 5-2 at Bramall Lane) for the duration and saw the thing through comfortably. Just as well, by the end of the season pay roll was by no means certain and the groundsman was forbidden from turning on the undersoil heating as the financial petrol tanks started to run dry. A third season at this level, with ever declining parachute payment, could have led to a collapse.

3rd — Luton (we said 5th, +2)

Shit we said: It will always be difficult for a club operating on this sort of budget to compete at the top end of this division. Just staying in the Championship, with this wage bill, is an achievement. I’ve seen last season described as a ‘flash in the pan’, and clearly with title odds at 25s-28s generally and as long as 33s with some online outlets the bookies aren’t having them at all. They lost Kal Naismith rather abruptly on a free transfer to Bristol City which is a blow — he may have been crap in both games with QPR last season but he played well overall and was a key part of their promotion chasing side.
Cards on the table though, I fancy them again. I fancy them big time. I’m not saying they’ll win the league but Coventry, Blackburn, Stoke and Swansea are among the teams with substantially shorter title odds and to that I just think I must be watching the wrong sport.

Perhaps I am, I’m wrong frequently. Naismith, fine, big loss, but I just see Bristol City yet again swallowing a big contract for a 30-year-old with no resale value. Luton recruit far smarter than that. Everything else that was good about them last season is still here — Adebayo up front, brilliant Scottish midfielder Allan Campbell, the rest of the defence bar Naismith. They made the six despite a lengthy injury list, which they’d be unlucky to suffer the likes of again. They’ve moved quickly, in Forest’s Ethan Horvath and Hibs’ Matt Macey, to fix up the problem goalkeeper position where six different lads pulled on gloves last season. While many teams, including ourselves, scrabble about looking for one striker, they’ve added two to the impressive attack they already have — Cauley Woodrow and Carlton Morris may have bombed in a tanking and mismanaged Barnsley side over the last 12 months but if QPR had signed those two for less than £3m last summer you wouldn’t have been able to move down the Uxbridge Road for HMS Piss The League memes. Great pick ups both, as is Alfie Doughty who was hot property (chased by QPR) at Charlton but is cheaper and attainable without that competition after a poor spell at Stoke — where everybody’s career goes to die. They’ve also picked up emperor penguin Luke Freeman on a free transfer — only just 30, and again the sort of signing that would have been heralded 18 months ago and hasn’t been made bad simply because he failed to impress at Sheff Utd.

Look, I hate them, I hate going there, and I hate the fucking shamelessly good-for-the-goose-good-for-the-gander gnome in charge of them, bitching and moaning about how other people conduct themselves while doing exactly the same and worse himself. I’m meant to hate them, I’m a QPR fan. But I love their team, I love their recruitment model, I love the football they play, and I think they’ll go very strongly again. You never see a poor bookie, and I’m wrong all the time, but I think their odds are a fucking joke.

Our prediction: 5th

How it went down: Stick with us kids.

4th — Boro (we said 1st, -3)

Shit we said: When I took my first job as the cub reporter at the prestigious Ripley and Heanor News the locals would tell tales of this mythical miracle working manager who’d turned up at unloved, unsupported, unbacked Alfreton Town and won four trophies in 27 weeks. Since then he’s promoted Oxford back to the Football League, no mean feat given the calibre of manager who’d been there and failed to do so prior, and won League Two with 100 points despite the financial collapse of the club around him at Northampton Town. At Sheff Utd he piled through two divisions double lively, from League One to Premier League and impressive survival in his first year. However it ended at Bramall Lane, you don’t back against Chris Wilder sides if you value your bank balance, and he’s the prime reason I’m making them my lock of the week for this season. Reason two — there’s some money to spend. They received £15m for Djed Spence without weakening their team — in fact with Isaiah Jones down one side and Ryan Giles recruited down the other that’s probably their strongest attribute. There may yet be a similar fee for Marcus Tavernier, with Forest and Bournemouth among those sniffing, which would be more damaging to the side, but still Chris Wilder with this squad and £30m to improve it could be quite something. They’ve already, prior to receiving those fees, moved to correct the obvious problem in goal, with Liam Roberts already in the building and Man City’s Zach Steffen shortly to be — not having a keeper who costs you a goal a fortnight is reason four. Reason five would have to be still to come — they were weak up front last season and remain so at this point, but correct that with the Spence money and I think they’re going to go very close.

Our prediction: 1st I like Geronimo, he’s got a classy swing.

How it went down: Boro did indeed solve their goalscoring problems and push for promotion. Villa’s Cameron Archer was obviously a brilliant capture in January but more surprising was the belated awakening of Chuba Akpom, previously a standing joke you’d probably have turned the lights off and hidden under the desk to avoid if you saw him walking down South Africa Road but suddenly a scorer of 29 goals in 35 games. They also launched the promotion bid we fancied them for, at one point winning 16 of 20 Championship fixtures. But we can’t really claim a lot of kudos for this call, given it was all based around our very high opinion of Chris Wilder, and in fact it was the weirdly lacklustre start of two wins from 11 games prior to his sacking, including a 3-2 loss at Loftus Road, that ultimately held Michael Carrick’s Boro back from the Premier League. Dope roped successfully by Coventry in the play-offs, Wilder has already had another unsuccessful stint with Watford and is now favourite to go into the basket case at Reading.

5th — Coventry (we said 9th, +4)

Shit we said: There aren’t many better eight-nine-ten combinations in this league than Gustavo Hamer, Viktor Gyokeres and Callum O’Hare. Coventry, though, are trapped in a similar vicious cycle to ourselves with Illy and Willy.

Old school football thinking is you obviously don’t want to sell your best players, and indeed if those three stick around I fancy Coventry to improve again this year and go higher than twelfth. City bought them for just £2.3m combined and now other clubs too rich and lazy to do similar levels of recruitment want to buy them all for five or six times that: Boro among several striker-hungry clubs to have sniffed at Gyokeres who they could have had for £1m just 12 months ago; Fulham have been linked with silly money for Hamer who would have cost them just £1.3m three transfer windows back; and Burnley are locked in a prolonged pursuit of O’Hare with Cov holding out for north of £9m for a player they got for free from Villa’s U21s. To lose one of them, particularly O’Hare whose high press and win back is such an enormous part of Robins’ style and tactics, would be very damaging so close to the season beginning. One of them leaving too close to the September deadline to do anything about could be catastrophic to their chances.

But they need supplementing. There are other good players here — Ben Sheaf, strong boy’s name, big Championship balls; Matt Godden, soft spot, but perhaps that’s just cos he used to play for Brigg Town — but the team is shy in other areas. They need a sale to give them the money to go out and do some other smart recruitment — they were beaten out of the Jake Clarke-Salter signing by QPR, and as we know we’re not exactly flush with cash. But would the damage caused by the loss of one of those key men be sustainable for that medium and long term game?

Their season really hangs on all of that — who stays, who goes, what do they do with any potential funds generated.

Our prediction: 9th We had Luton ninth last year but said they could be a dark horse, and the same applies here if their best players stick around.

How it went down: Gyokeres, Hamer and O’Hare ultimately all stuck around for the season and Coventry were therefore exactly the dark horse we expected them to be. That despite O’Hare’s season ending early through injury, a start to the campaign beset by more problems with their hedge fund owners, a series of postponements of home games after a herd of Commonwealth Games rugby players trampled the pitch into oblivion, and just one win from their first 11 games. As ever, while QPR were busy patting themselves on the back for nicking Jake Clarke-Salter last summer, they’d neglected to notice his ominous record of never having made it to 30 games in a season, and Coventry simply went out and got a far better, more reliable defender in Luke McNally instead. They kept 22 clean sheets, which must be nice, including both games against our hapless rabble. Gyokeres was the division’s outstanding player, certainly the best in both our games against them, but Hamer wasn’t far behind. Desperately unlucky not to see the whole thing through, losing on penalties in the play-off final. Smart recruitment operation, even smarter manager.

6th — Sunderland (we said 16th, +10)

Shit we said: Like Leeds and Nottingham Forest, Sunderland are one of those clubs for whom no amount of freefall, no amount of farce, no level of humiliation, no number of Netflix clips of them bidding against their own manager to sign a part-used Will Grigg they don’t need for ten times the asking price, will ever quite quell the notion that this is definitely their year because, well, look at the size of the ground for fuck’s sake, and the shiny training facilities, and the number of people who turn up when it’s going well.

Howaaaayyyyyyyytheriverwheretheyusedtobuildthebooooooooats. And dad wor saaaaad.

Roaring up through the play-offs on a 16-game unbeaten run, with hot property Ross Stewart notching 26 goals in the process, has set light to the locals and raised Alex Neil up to some sort of godly status in this corner of the North East. There is zero expectation of a struggle against relegation, and frequently quite the opposite now in these parts — could this be a Sheff Utd/Wolves-style pile straight through the Championship back to the Prem? They’re right that this team as it is should have no problems staying in next season’s Championship, and even if Stewart only does half as well goals-wise at the higher level that’s still a better goalscorer than half the league had last season. We may have hated everything about Neil’s shithousy Preston outfit, but he was working within severe restrictions there and it’s easy to forget the reputation he forged winning promotion and bringing through players like James McCarthy and McArthur at tiny Hamilton before also revitalising and promoting Norwich. Good manager this bloke, and his teams are horrible to play against.

Money spent on a permanent move for Monster energy drinks enthusiast Jack Clarke raises eyebrows — this kid is going to be like a modern day Jermaine Jenas, clocking up multiple moves for millions of pounds and maintaining a stellar reputation while largely contributing fuck all — but to get centre back Daniel Ballard on a permanent deal within budget is one of the signings of the summer.

At least one, and often two, of the newly promoted teams have been relegated straight back from the Championship in each of the last five seasons as the financial gap between the division and League One has widened. The highest a newly promoted team has finished in the last four seasons is fifteenth. That should temper some of the wilder optimism emanating from Wearside. But I’d be staggered if Sunderland are the one to continue that trend this season.

Our prediction: 16th And I still can’t believe Luke O’Nien hasn’t played for QPR at some point.

How it went down: A significant undercall epitomised by our opinion of Jack Clarke, who scored twice at Loftus Road and is now once again on the radar of several Premier League teams as one of the division’s hotter properties. Imagine how good he could be if he stopped pissing about with his shorts for five minutes. Sunderland’s charge into the play-offs was driven by a recruitment operation that has gone from the standing joke of the Will Grigg deal, to one of the best in the EFL. Getting Patrice from The Inbetweeners on loan from PSG last summer caught the eye initially, but it was the loan of Amad Diallo, a 20-year-old Man Utd had paid £19m for from Atalanta, which really set them alight. The success was achieved in the face of some considerable adversity. Arsenal’s Dan Ballard, who looked some coup at centre back, was injured by a nasty Albert Adomah tackle in our game up there in August. Alex Neil then made the unfathomable decision to walk out on them for a job pissing into the furnace at the Springfield Tire Fire. Ellis Simms was recalled from their attack by Everton in January right at the point his talismanic permanent partner Ross Stewart was ruled out for the year with an Achilles blow up. None of it mattered, Moany Towbray burnished his reputation considerably, a play-off semi-final represented a fantastic first year back at this level, and Sunderland finally feel like they’re on an upward trajectory again after many years of farce.

7th — Blackburn (we said 17th, +10)

Shit we said: I’m worried about Blackburn. Not worried enough to tip them to go down, but I’d be very surprised if they weren’t kicking around having the sort of seasons Bristol City and Cardiff did last year.

Once it became clear their play-off push was over last season a weird inertia seemed to set in. Towbury was obviously not staying, but nor was anybody confirming that publicly, or to him. In the end his contract ran out and he just sort of drifted away. Pretty poor form, given everything he’d achieved there. Say what you want about his football, decision making, complete disregard of the need to defend, but he always comes across as a decent fella. Despite that head start, and links to all the managers we were rumoured to be after and more (their angry little boys on Twitter had a “Daniel Farke’s coming” fantasy wank fest too) it took until June 14 for Jon Dahl Tomasson to be rewarded for his two titles and impressive assault on the Champions League at Malmo with a one-way ticket to Lancashire.

There have been significant departures from last season’s starting 11: Joe Rothwell, often impressive against QPR, now has to babysit Ben Pearson at Bournemouth; centre back Darragh Lenihan is part of an increasingly impressive summer of business done at Middlesbrough, but the underrated Scott Wharton remains; they couldn’t agree terms with right wing back Ryan Nyambe, but God knows what they offered because the 24-year-old has floated around free agency this summer and now looks set to wind up at newly promoted Wigan; Bradley Johnson has mercifully been expunged in the direction of MK Dons, if ever a club and a personality were made for each other. There’s a considerable looming problem with Brereton-Salas — Rovers have exercised a one-year contract extension, but he’s predictably shown no sign in wanting to commit beyond that leaving a club constantly dancing along the FFP tightrope, and only under it to this point thanks to the big money sale of Adam Armstrong, torn between losing their best hope of competing this season now for some valuable transfer funds, or waving their most sellable asset goodbye next year for free.

Rovers have so far added only Barnsley’s Callum Brittain and PNE youngster Ethan Walker to their ranks, and while the transfer activity up the road at Deepdale has been similarly uninspiring they have energised their fan base with a creative marketing campaign that has drawn record season ticket sales, while all Rovers can do is kick the renewal deadline down the road a week at a time hoping somebody, anybody, bites at prices they’ve picked this opportune moment to jack up.
Rather you than me lads.

Our prediction: 17th

How it went down: We get Blackburn wrong every year. Tomasson arrived having apparently spent the summer at Flavio Briatore’s School of Football Learnings at which, as we know, module 1.1 is that the difference between a defeat and a draw is only one point (442, 442, 442, 442, 442, 442, 442, 442, 442, 442). Rovers won 14, lost 12 and drew none of their first 26 Championship games, which had them firmly ensconced in a play-off picture their underlying numbers didn’t really support. Such is the Championship, they then drew six in a row. A 3-1 win at Loftus Road was part of a run of five maximums in six that looked to have them on course for the end of season knockouts but an unlucky late defeat at Sheff Utd in the FA Cup quarter final (me neither) sparked a winless run of eight (another five draws) at exactly the wrong time and meant that even their dramatic 4-3 win on the final day at Millwall wasn’t enough to make the six. Still, whatever we predict for them next season, cash in by backing the exact opposite.

8th — Millwall (we said 8th, =)

Shit we said: That performance against QPR last season was Rowett’s Millwall at its best — it just needs to be that a little bit more, a little bit more often, and they’ll push for the six. What stands in their way immediately is not only that star man Jed Wallace has left for a big pay day at West Brom, but that the readies are going entirely into his pocket (and his agent’s) while Millwall get nothing from a free transfer to invest in the team. I always thought he’d get far more attention if he played for a more fashionable club, certainly worse players have moved for far more money in this division while he’s been at The Den, and to get nothing for him is a body blow.

Millwall have nevertheless spent money on a replacement. Ajax-educated Zian Flemming is a club-record £2.25m arrival from Fortuna Sittard, where he scored 12 goals from midfield last season to aid their survival in the Dutch top flight and made WhoScored.com’s Eredivisie team of the season. If he adapts, quickly, this could be superb business, and actually make West Brom look like the daft ones (again). George Honeyman, too, looks an absolute steal to me - newly-minted Hull blinded by big names and Turkish caps, allowing their second best player last season to walk away while placing their faith in Ozan Tufan who rather disgraced himself at Watford last season.
Watch out too for loaned Leeds centre back Charlie Cresswell. At 19 he’ll make mistakes, but Millwall needed a replacement for Arsenal loanee Daniel Ballard who they couldn’t make permanent and while everybody is noshing Sunderland off for landing his signature I suspect in 12 months’ time watchers of this division will rave about Cresswell in the same way — loves to cause panic by stepping purposefully out of defence with the ball, beating the first press, and freeing team mates with the right pass. Big fan. I’ve never rated Benik Afobe but, overall, this is smart recruitment. Clearly there’s an ongoing saga with Danny McNamara, out of contract next summer and apparently keen to make a move to QPR despite playing up his Wawll tendencies previously, but Rangers seem to have gone about that in such a public and cack-handed way that the Lions will likely dig their heels in and risk losing him on a free than do business at low-ball prices.
If he sticks around this is a very promising looking team that could challenge the six.

Our prediction: 8th

How it went down: Millwall are always out outside bet for the play-offs, and having added Zian Flemming to their attack last summer their odds of 33/1 for promotion looked chunky to me. He proved to be one of the division’s outstanding talents with 15 goals, and Tom Bradshaw hitting his straps with 17 meant that as well as being the typically solid, awkward, difficult opponent we’ve come to expect of both Wawll and Gary Rowett sides, they also carried significant threat. There were seven hat tricks scored in the Championship last season and Millwall had three of those. That looked like it would be enough for a play-off spot right up until there was only 45 minutes of the season left when, requiring a win to guarantee a spot, they somehow contrived to blow a 3-1 lead at home to Blackburn and lose 4-3 — Rovers’ first win in nine. With the division now once again filling up with “big clubs” with hefty support and budgets, they may never have a better chance. Another year of sniffing out latent Marxist cells in the backstreet pubs of Huddersfield awaits.

9th — West Brom (we said 6th, -3)

Shit we said: This is a critical season for West Brom. Remarkably, last year’s final finish of tenth was the first time they’ve ended up lower than sixth in the second tier since 2000/01 — more than 20 years of either competing at the top end of this league or playing in the one above. There isn’t a great deal to show for that though.

The days of Dan Ashworth’s revolutionary planning and forward thinking are long gone, with the club now run day to day by CEO Ron Gourlay — hot footing it to The Hawthorns leaving behind the smouldering wreck of his previous gig at Reading. The club’s Chinese owner, Guochuan Lai, far from putting money into the club to try and get it back to the Premier League, actually took £5m out of it last season by way of a loan to prop up his other pandemic-addled businesses. He promises that this will be repaid in the coming season, and available for players, but if that passes the smell test for you then do take an adult with you when going to buy a used car. Parachute payments start declining dramatically towards zero after this second season in the Championship so things will start to look very Stoke/QPR indeed in these parts if they don’t go back right now.

To do so they’re trying their hand at offering once-in-a-lifetime contracts to decent Championship players with no future sell-on value, which worked so well for Gourlay at Reading he’s gleefully overseeing it all over again and hoping for better results. Nobody would doubt the ability at this level of either Jed Wallace or John Swift (if he can stay fit) but don’t go up, and have those parachute payments decline, and it’s difficult to see how you find another buyer to take them on these deals at their age.

Besides, that sort of steady, reliable, Championship stalwart isn’t the thing this squad lacks. It lacks youth, and pace, and legs, and energy. Do any of their summer signings so far provide that? They tried to cheat their way out of the mess they’d made for themselves last season by spending £8m on Daryl Dike on deadline day, only for him to contribute two appearances and one smash of Yoann Barbet into the advertising hoardings before being ruled out for the rest of the campaign — a good No Guarantee case study for the “sign a fucking striker” brigade to consider each January when they’re haranguing our board to bust the budget for a forward. Much will depend on him and Karlan Grant forming the division’s best striking partnership and covering up the multitude of cracks elsewhere with all the goals.

Our prediction: 6th I’ll be honest, I’ve bottled this to some extent. I didn’t see it with West Brom when everybody was tipping them last season, and I don’t see it this, but literally every other preview has them winning the thing so I’ve relented and moved them up three places from ninth which is where I had them originally.

How it went down: They finished ninth, which is exactly where I initially expected them to. Bah. There was always going to be a ‘Steve Bruce tax’ on their performance but few thought the enormous man cabbage would actually take a squad with this much about it down — the Baggies were bottom of the league when he was belatedly mercy killed in October after one win in 13 games. Carlos Corberan’s transformation was immediate and dramatic — West Brom won nine of ten games conceding just two goals. But this is a club with an absent owner taking money out of the business rather than putting it in, a CEO that has already been on the bridge for one Championship sinking, and a recruitment operation that last summer included Eric Pieters because he lived on the same street as the manager and Brandon Thomas-Asante because he played in the same Salford team as Bruce’s son in law. A flawed group, destined to fall short of the top six, and now staring right down the financial barrel.

10th — Swansea (we said 10th, =)

Shit we said: There prevails an attitude that there is a right and wrong way to play football, and if you say anything against a ‘progressive’, young, ethos and culture-driven coach like Russell Martin then you’re obviously a Tony Pulis acolyte who thinks Sam Allardyce would have had the Dortmund job if he’d had a Johnny Foreigner name, and selects their dream candidate for the QPR job from the sofa of the Keys and Gray show. There is a happy medium, I could no more watch Pulis teams than I could GBNews, but equally I have seen more entertaining things come out of GBNews than the Swansea games we suffered through last year.

They spent the final game of the season, almost in its entirety, trying and failing to execute a goal kick where the keeper played a one-two with a wide centre back and picked the return up on the edge of the box. The keeper, Andy Fisher, who had presumably followed Martin from MK Dons specifically because he can do this sort of thing, palpably could not do this sort of thing. Three outcomes occurred on a loop: Lyndon Dykes closed the whole thing down and took the ball off them sparking a panic that would have been a good deal more dramatic had it been a better striker than Lyndon Dykes doing it; they belted the ball straight into touch looking for a wing back; they ended up smacking the ball long down the field anyway, as they could have done from the goalkick, only with less risk and without pissing away another 45 seconds of everybody’s life. It felt like an awful lot of effort to expend on a best case scenario of ‘your goalkeeper will have the ball at his feet 18 yards further forward than when he started’. It was like watching Tommy Cooper magic: keeper, ball, defender. Defender, ball, keeper. Alllaacazar… Whack. Just like that.

And I stand there watching this thinking… is it just me? Analytics accounts creaming their kegs, people falling over themselves to nosh this all off, £8m paid for central midfielder Flynn Downes, and yet there they were, fifteenth in the league. Fifteenth in the league, with a lesser-spotted 20-goal-a-season striker — only Mitrovic, Solanke and Brereton bagged more than Joel Piroe’s brilliant debut season total of 22. They finished the season without a win in six games — a sequence that included blowing a 4-1 deficit at Reading, a 3-0 home lead against Bournemouth, and losing 5-1 at Nottingham Forest. I found the whole thing profoundly odd.

Whether it is ‘just me’ and the xG evangelists are right to have a big stiff hard on for this lot this season we’re about to find out. I’ll confess I’ve drunk the Kool-Aid to the point that I think Swansea might be an interesting dark horse this season, but not a lot more than that, and were Piroe to leave then you can hack seven or eight places off our prediction.

I’ve tipped several other more rudimentary, traditional teams — Boro, Sheff Utd — on the basis that they’ll go well “if they get a striker before the end of the window”. Well, here, at Swansea, they’ve already got two. Piroe grabbed the majority of the goals and headlines last season, and there were certainly few better buys at EFL level than 22 goals in 40 starts for a basic £1m than him, but they’ve also brought in Southampton livewire Michael Obafemi for a similar fee alongside him and have Jamie Paterson, very decent at this level, to play behind them as well. I fancy Obefemi and Piroe, in particular, to terrorise this league this season if they stay — a number of those well financed clubs looking for strikers will surely pay a visit here over the next five weeks. Downes has already gone, but good money and a quick turnaround profit was made, which judging by their transfer activity last summer could be very useful indeed. After a few years doing stupid things under clueless American ownership, pick ups like MK Dons’ 22-year-old centre back starlet Harry Darling following Downes, Piroe, Obafemi and Manning previously suggest a return to that canny Swansea recruitment of old — although Andy Scott, who was overseeing that, left midway through last season.

They’ll need a couple more, including a good Downes replacement, even allowing for Joe Allen’s Indian summer. I think they’re soft-centred, and often the balance between culture/ethos and pragmatism is miles out of whack. At times last season they selected Ryan Manning as a third centre back, and along with Ben Cabango and despite the addition of Darling that is a defence that is gettable in the air — all three of them barely win 50% of headers they compete for. But I’m intrigued, and ready to be proved wrong. I’d be tipping QPR for the top six if we had their strikers.

Our prediction: 10th If Piroe were to leave, stick a seven or eight on top of that nought.

How it went down: Pretty much exactly as we expected. Piroe was fourth top scorer in the division with another 19 to his name — Obafemi, on the other hand, started chucking his toys around to force through a move to Burnley. Ryan Manning produced his best season in Swans’ colours, coincidentally just as his contract was running out (he has, please make sure you’re sitting down, refused to renew it and will now depart on a free). Harry Darling won a header once every six or seven weeks. There were two separate spurts of seven wins from nine games, and two other spells of one win in ten. They beat Cardiff twice. Martin talked about the process a lot. They beat Cardiff twice. And finished exactly where we said they would.

11th — Watford (we said 4th, -7)

Shit we said: The first thing Watford desperately needed was to clear wood more petrified than dead. There were dozens of players here last season picking up big money not arsed about their output in return. Andre Gray, Ben Foster, Josh King, Sissoko and others were sucking up enormous wages and contributing less than fuck all. The second question, and the reason it’s so hard writing these things with five weeks of transfer window left, will be how many of the Ismael Sarr and Emmanuel Dennis types are sticking around for a Championship slog, because if the answer is most or all of them then Watford should be able to walk a promotion without even playing that well, just as they did last time. Rob Edwards felt like a left-field choice as manager despite his promotion at Forest Green last season — as I wrote when we were pursuing MK Dons’ Liam Manning, beware getting too doe-eyed over a lower league manager achieving things at a well-run club, with a great budget for their level, shrewd chairman, small crowds and zero expectation if those things don’t apply to you too. Of course usually assessing the Watford manager is as pointless as weighing the merits of the education secretary — don’t worry about it, there’ll be another along in a minute — but the club have been making the right noises about it being “different this time” with Edwards given more control over signings and promised time. They’ve been cautious in the market so far, two additions to the attack and with the nine shirt left vacant it looks like there’ll be another to come up there. Hopes will probably hang more on who stays rather than who’s new — Joao Pedro, Sarr, Dennis, all way too good for the Championship and should be enough to guarantee the six regardless of anything else that happens if they stick around.

Our prediction: 4th This year’s Sheff Utd. Coughing, spluttering, plenty good enough to make the play-offs, debatable whether they’ll have enough to win them.

How it went down: Given that Sarr and Pedro both stuck around for a season of Championship football, and they hauled in north of £50m in sales including the standard con-job with Hassane Kamara going to Udinese for £16m and being loaned straight back (Since the Pozzo family bought Watford ten years ago there have been 66 separate transactions with Udinese, 55 of them listed as a loan or undisclosed fee), this was a catastrophic under achievement. Rob Edwards, as we perhaps should have predicted, was given about 20 minutes to bring about the change so desperately needed with a tired and disinterested side. After getting the sack he walked straight into the job at bitter near neighbours Luton and got them promoted instead. Slaven Bilic was the next cab on the rank, and although the injury problems were significant during his 25 games it was difficult to be particularly inspired by him or his team as it started to drift away down the table. The Hornets have had 19 permanent managers in ten years and it’s starting to feel like managers are just using it as a little bank account top up, not really bothered or interested in what they’re doing here because they know they’ll be sacked soon anyway. Bilic barely concealed his ambivalence towards the job and Chris Wilder, typically, didn’t even try and opened fire publicly on his players after a late home defeat to Cardiff City. With one win in 20 games and five consecutive defeats QPR desperately needed to find a team even less arsed than they were at the start of March, and it turned out to be Watford — still the only game Rangers have won at Loftus Road in 15 matches. Pretty despicable all in all and they’re now doing that West Brom trick of giving a disinterested, immobile side to Valerian Ismael to play with.

12th - Preston (we said 15th, +3)

Shit we said: On the pitch, they have a significant issue straight away. I absolutely love Ben Whiteman in midfield, gutted our pursuit of him from Doncaster didn’t bear fruit, Daniel Johnson is just good plain and simple, and Ryan Ledson really should get more chat, but apart from that their best performers last season, like Everton’s Anthony Gordon before them, were loan players. Brice Samba, Lee Nicholls, Wes Foderingham and others took the plaudits, press attention and honours last season, but perhaps due to their league position and lack of Sky picks there was precious little said outside of Deepdale about Daniel Iversen — he was, nevertheless, one of the division’s best goalkeepers, and he hasn’t come back from Leicester. Nor has Liverpool’s 20-year-old centre back Sepp van den Berg, another who few in the division could hold a candle to during a highly successful 18-month spell here. And, of course, much of the second half revival last season was predicated on the goals and form of the enormously impressive young Villa striker Cameron Archer who got seven goals in 18 starts for the Whites, and 17 in 29 across the whole season, including a famous winner here against bitter rivals Blackpool and another against QPR where he was wholly too hot for us to handle all afternoon. Watford seem confident they lead the chase for him if Villa choose to send him the Championship’s way again.

That is a serious loss of talent and goals for and against, right down the spine of the team. What PNE fish out of this season’s loan market to replace it could be key to their fortunes, and an added problem with that is the early start to our season, and late closing of the transfer window, means half a dozen league games will already have been played before that last week when the Premier League squads are named and the decisions are made about which prospects are going out on loan or not. They have made more headway than most - Alvaro Fernandez came in on print deadline from Man Utd. As did Troy Parrott from Spurs - a high profile capture for Millwall in 2020/21 where he subsequently failed to score at all, he has rebuilt a burgeoning reputation playing as a more withdrawn forward at MK Dons and a role off the excellent Emil Ris Jakobsen, rather than having to play the leading man himself, could fit very nicely. There may also be some reinforcements from within — 18-year-old Mikey O’Neill came on for a debut when we lost there in April and is one of a clutch of youth players they have reasonably high hopes for and are determined to offer more chance to after losing local prospect Tyrhys Dolan to Blackburn.

Our prediction: 15th

How it went down: Now, when we said they’d lost a lot of talent and goals from their previous team we didn’t quite expect that to manifest in no goals scored in five of their first six league games, four nil nil draws in the first five fixtures and six of the bloody things in the first 11. Bad injuries to star man Emil Ris and later Travelodge’s best customer Ched Evans exacerbated problems further. They won seven of 11 either side of the World Cup culminating in a thumping win in the derby at Blackburn, but then somehow lost 1-0 at home to QPR in the next game and were then beaten at home by Huddersfield. This pattern continued. A midfield of Ledson, Whiteman and Johnson is always going to be very good at this level, but they didn’t have enough at either end of the pitch to convert that into a sustained play-off push. Their 2-0 win at Loftus Road was part of another hot streak of six wins and one defeat in nine games, but it was once again driven at least in part by a handy loan capture — Tom Cannon from Everton this time. Economic factors mean it’s difficult to see how they really break out of this cycle.

13th — Norwich (we said 2nd, -11)

Shit we said: Fulham were one of those we called spot on in this column last summer and in predicting the Whites would be promoted straight back I said it felt like their squad had ‘one more yo left in it’. I’m less convinced by Norwich this year but such are the advantages provided by Premier League TV revenue and parachute payments in the current Championship climate that you’d be foolish to back against at least one and probably two of the relegated teams to go straight back — last year one did, one lost in the play-off semi-final, and one crashed and burned but six of the last 12 promotions spots from this league have been taken by Watford, Norwich, Bournemouth and Fulham by themselves.

Norwich have been quiet thus far in the transfer market, though that changed last week when £6m (rising north of a club record £9m potentially) was shelled out on 23-year-old Sao Paulo midfielder Gabriel Sara — brought in to play right in the heart of Dean Smith’s 4-3-3, and a belated attempt to replace the influence of Skipp in their last promoted team. If he settles and fires (and turning up with an ankle injury isn’t a terrific start) and Pukki is retained despite mumblings earlier in the summer that he wanted out up front that will probably be enough. Christoph Zimmermann’s departure means Norwich start a season without a German in their squad for the first time since the 2016/17 season. Further reinforcements apparently depend on a fee being received for Max Aarons, but if not that’s another player in this team a cut above most others at this level. There’s been some pretty uninspiring teams promoted from this pathetically average division over the past few years purely through the financial advantages the system provides — Bournemouth 2022, Watford 2021, Fulham 2020 — and I can see Norwich adding their name to that list.

Our prediction: 2nd Boring.

How it went down: Well, it was certainly boring, but not in the way we thought it might be. Under Dean Smith’s wholly uninspiring charge, watching Norwich felt like trying to complete a long journey using only the District Line. In theory you’re getting where you need to go — at one point Norwich won seven and lost none of ten — but it’s all just so slow and dull you can feel the life draining out of you as the rest of the world trundles past the window. When the expectant home masses started to vocalise their displeasure at a manager taking all the myriad advantages the parachute payment clubs have at their disposal — Norwich paid more for Josh Sargent than Rotherham have spent in the history of their club, and the Millers left Carrow Road with a 0-0 draw — and using it to create wallpaper paste, Smith rather ill-advisedly turned it back on them and accused them of creating a negative and hostile atmosphere for their own players. It’s a bold strategy Cotton… Smith’s always been an insufferable, whinging excuse merchant, and his inability to ever once accept responsibility for the under performance of his team had caught up with him. In the next game at Luton, another club operating on a fraction of Norwich’s budget that nevertheless beat them, the fans spent the evening signing “it’s all our fault” on a loop. Now untenable, Smith left to pursue an identical career opportunity — relegating Leicester, where presumably he might stay and do this all over again in the Championship next year. Sporting director Stuart Webber chose an airport he knew for the emergency landing, re-teaming with David Wagner having enjoyed great success in their Huddersfield days. Norwich, however, won only one of their last 11 matches and Webber is now a man under severe pressure in Norfolk.

14th — Bristol City (we said 13th, -1)

Shit we said: Those financial set of results, and another summer of zero money received for players, means by the current CEO’s own admission a six-point FFP penalty isn’t out of the question at the point the next set of accounts are filed in February/March time, which should be factored into any Bristol City predictions.

There is, however, some light at the end of the tunnel. Unlike QPR, they did spend money on infrastructure when they had it, so one of the Championship’s best stadiums and a shiny new training ground are now open and in place and the academy is starting to churn out results.

It does mean there’s been nothing spent on transfers this window but City have done a couple of eye-catching bits of business on frees. Right wing back Kane Wilson, a 22-year-old product of the West Brom academy, was named League Two’s overall player of the season in a promoted Forest Green side last year and arrives for nothing. That’s precisely the sort of pick up City need to get back to if they’re to get out of the mire, and given how similar our circumstances are and how desperate we are for a right back ourselves I can’t help but wonder where one earth we were on that one. His arrival means Alex Scott, still only 18 but already with 41 Championship appearances and four goals, will no longer be required to fill in down the right and can move permanently into the central midfield role from which he’s just excelled in England U19s European Championship success. The Guernsey-born playmaker has all the potential to be one of those £20m-must-haves, and in the meantime it’s tremendously exciting for City to have him at the heart of their team this year. Another youth product, Ghanaian Antoine Semenyo, has started to hit his straps and looked unplayable at his best last season. A pre-season injury is less than ideal, but fit and firing he’s going to cause teams an issue, and again it feels like that City model of old creaking back into life again. Andreas Weimann has always been a grossly underrated player at this level for my money too.

Yoann Barbet’s last-second winner at Ashton Gate in December was one of 13 goals City conceded in injury time last season for a loss of 14 points — the worst case being a 1-0 home lead against Forest frittered away to defeat with goals in the 93rd and 94th minutes. Now, I know this is a little bit ‘if my grandmother had wheels she’d be a bike’, and City also scored five injury time goals of their own for considerable points gain including a smash and grab at Loftus Road, but put those 14 points back on and they finish ninth level with Blackburn and Millwall. You wouldn’t think they’ll hamstring themselves quite like that again — a goals against column of 77, even with Daniel Bentley’s ongoing heroics in goal, gets most teams relegated and will surely be improved upon. I don’t like the Kal Naismith signing as much as many seem to, partly because he was crap against QPR twice for Luton last season but also because they’re again committing handsome contracts to 30+ year olds, but the defence needs tightening and that’s a reasonable attempt at doing so.

Our prediction: 13th

How it went down: Pretty much as we expected, but City now feel well poised to kick on. They, like us, pursued a development model that at one point was ticking over very tidy transfer fees at a rate of one a summer for the likes of Adam Webster and Jonathan Kodjia. Like us they found that interrupted by a mixture of Covid and the subsequent collapse in the Championship transfer market; hubris and stupidity in handing out enormous contracts to players like Nahki Wells with no re-sale value; and poor management/bad luck with contracts on serllable assets like Han Noah Messengo and Famara Diedhiou. Unlike us, they have successfully cleaned house from that position. A handy £10m has already been banked for one academy graduate in Semenyo and the spending is already underway this summer with today’s news they’re getting Rob Dickie from our good selves. At least twice that fee will be fetched for Alex Scott when he inevitably leaves. They finished the season at Loftus Road with six academy graduates in their team and zero loan players. So while the needle didn’t move much on their league position for 22/23, they do now look and feel better placed to start motoring again providing the recruitment is right.

15th — Hull City (we said 12th, -3)

Shit we said: You know a Championship football club with money is a little like the mule with a spinning wheel. Nobody knows how he got it and danged if he knows how to use it.

Hull initially spent their first summer with cash in ten years running round desperately trying to persuade somebody to take it from them — I’d say Scott Twine laughed at them but he seems too polite and well brought up for that sort of disrespect. Pick ups like Nottingham Forest’s bang average Tobias Figueiredo feel very much like scraps left after everybody else has feasted on the summer transfer table. They’ve also — and this shouldn’t be forgotten when wondering whether the Tigers are actually a bit of a dark horse this year — lost their two outstanding and most influential players with George Honeyman a shrewd pick up by Millwall and Keane Lewis-Potter the most Brentfordy Brentford signing since their last one. Jean Michael Seri, a multi-capped Senegal international and £25m buy for Fulham not four years ago, replaces Honeyman but at 30, on a three-year contract, and with his wage at Craven Cottage said to be eye-watering, that’s a bit of an amber warning light for me rather than reason to be cheerful. Likewise £2.7m Ozan Tufan who was at Watford last year and, putting it kindly, was total fucking crap.

The one I’m most fascinated about is Vitoria striker Oscar Estupinan - 25 years old, Colombian international, 15 goals in Portugal’s top flight for an unfashionable team last season. I’ve a dead dog buried at the bottom of my garden that would be an upgrade on Tom fucking Eaves so that shouldn’t be hard for him to achieve, but if he can come in and have a Joel Piroe-style debut season at this level then Hull will not only surprise a few, but they’ll also have succeeded where Boro, Sheff Utd, QPR and others have failed in finding an affordable, available, quality striker in this market. He’s a penalty box player, not a lot to contribute outside of there, but I presume that’s what Borat extra Allahyar Sayyadmanesh (chenquieh) has been brought in to do (at not inconsiderable expense).

Our prediction: 12th Impossible to call. If you tell me now they finish third and go up, I’m not surprised. If you tell me now they finish third bottom and go down, I’m not surprised. More known unknowns and unknown knowns than a round of pass the parcel at Donald Rumsfeld’s birthday party. I’ll stick them bang in the middle and watch with intrigue.

How it went down: As expected. Some of their eclectic bunch of summer signings landed, with Estupinan scoring 13 goals in his first term; while others didn’t, dribbly winger Dogukan (Catucan’t) Sinik was back in Turkey by the first week of January. Shota Arveladze didn’t make it as far as October, sacked shortly after a 3-1 humbling at Loftus Road, but Liam Rosenior feels like a potentially shrewd and forward thinking appointment. From the beginning of December to the end of the campaign Hull only lost five league games, but there were 13 draws mixed in there including seven of the last 12 which held back progress on the league table.

16th — Stoke City (we said 11th, -5)

Shit we said: Stoke did finish last season in reasonably decent nick, with five wins and a draw from their last nine games — although three of those victories came against Blackburn, West Brom and QPR who by that stage were all in varying stages of collapse. The January rescue of Lewis Baker from the Chelsea puppy farm proved a very shrewd move indeed, with eight goals in 20 starts from a deep midfield role marking him out as a potential star of the coming campaign. Our former youth charge Josh Laurent doesn’t look a bad pick up alongside him but in Cardiff’s Aden Flint and Newcastle’s Dwight Gayle on free transfers Stoke are once again committing budget and squad space to a player at the wrong end of his career with zero sell-on value. There’s no doubt they’ve been more unfortunate than basically any other team at this level for injuries in recent times — you’ll always struggle to legislate for your star centre half coming back from international break with a knee joint that looks like Boris and Carrie have had one of their on-expenses Abba parties in it — but equally you cannot pursue a transfer policy of signing players like Flint (32 at time of signing), Gayle (32), Mario Vrancic (33), Phil Jagielka (39), Steven Fletcher (35), John Obi Mikel (35), James Chester (30), Lee Gregory (30) and then complain that your squad lacks fitness and legs through the winter. Gayle, the most recent arrival, has started just 135 games in the last ten years — for comparison Ilias Chair has started 140 since January 2019.

The Vrancic signing is another classic example— a Championship winner with Norwich, and a very astute looking pick up initially as he impressed in Stoke’s early season play-off push, scoring the killer second against QPR in West London in December. But as the long Championship season wore on his influence waned and legs buckled, except he’d already breached the number of appearances required to trigger an automatic contract extension for 2022/23 by the end of which he’ll be 34 and Stoke have had to spend time this summer finding him a loan deal at Croatia’s HNK Rijeka to try and shift the wage.

You have to box cleverer, and in fairness the Lewis Baker deal certainly does, but Stoke will need a lot more like that if they’re to keep the wolf from the door — a £56m loss in their last set of accounts following £87.2m the year before, tempered slightly by the £70m sale of the stadium to the owners a month before that practice was outlawed by the EFL, make this not only an expensive hobby for the minted Coates family, but surely the division’s next drawn-out FFP case waiting to happen.

Our prediction: 11th Get fit, stay fit, there’s a steady team here with plenty of goals in its attack. But we’ve said that a few summers running now and they’ve been 16th, 15th, 14th and 14th over the last four seasons.

How it went down: We say the same every summer and Stoke reliably respond in kind each time. They’re yet to finish in the top half of this division since being relegated back to it six years ago, and that never, ever looked like changing in 22/23. Michael O’Neill was jettisoned early, immediately after they’d let him spend the summer budget on players for his system and team. Alex Neil, for reasons known only to himself, agreed to jump across from Sunderland and then spent the rest of the season talking about what he’ll be able to do once he’s been allowed to get his own players. Stoke lost 12 home matches, the most in the division with us. Dwight Gayle, their latest expensive recruit of a 30+ has been, scored three times. A massive fee for Harry Souttar eases FFP fears but there’s little to get excited about with this team and club at the moment.

17th - Birmingham (we said 24th, +7)

Shit we said: There has been plenty stirring at St Andrew’s this summer, and none of it good. The club is, palpably, obviously, in an absolute catastrophic mess. The whole place looks and smells like the old toilets at the back of The Springbok. Run into the ground by successive abysmally incompetent ownership groups. They will once again start the season with vast swathes of their home ground closed, vague assertions and promises about remediation works and rotting concrete still being trotted out more than three years since anybody last sat in those seats — enough time to demolish and rebuild the stands in their entirety. A “Club Update” published on the club’s official website, talking about how brilliantly pre-season was going, how John Eustace was getting his coaching staff together, a new make of washing powder the kitman was trialling, (oh and by the way there’s been no progress on the ground and we’ve actually pretty much stopped work on it), would have shamed a Russian newspaper. It was like phoning the old ClubCall line and sitting through £17.80-worth of detailed report on the reserves' defeat at Northwood the previous evening to find out the club had gone into administration. A loyal and long suffering support base is being treated like mugs. Brum’s precious category one academy has been stripped of its status and downgraded to category two.

Three weeks shy of the new season the team had 16 players and no manager. John Eustace’s reputation burgeoned enough under Mark Warburton for him to come close to the Blackpool and Swansea jobs prior to this, so maybe he’ll be a masterstroke, but the return of Dion Sanderson on loan — who played for QPR in the second half of last season and frequently gave the impression of somebody who’d had rather too much to drink — being hyped as some sort of enormous coup does not bode well at all. There was, for sometime, almost certainty that Warbs would be taking this job himself, but his old mate Frank McParland loitering in the background sniffing after Gardner’s role seems to have put paid to that. A clueless ownership and rudderless ship will always put enough blood in the water to attract sharks looking to chew over whatever is left of the carcass and Warbs’ subsequent random move to be David Moyes’ bibs, balls and cones man at West Ham only furthers the notion that Davids Sullivan and Gold are once again somehow involved in this club’s annual takeover bid.

The whole shemozzle came to national attention when Laurence Bassini pulled his button mushroom out the back of his favourite Thai ladyboy long enough to appear on TalkSport with a BIG ANNOUNCEMENT to make, which he’ll make in a minute, because that’s what he’s come on to do, to make a big announcement, which is coming, but first, before the big announcement, that he’s here to make, and will be making, he just wants to say something to Simon Jordan prior to the big announcement, which he’s here to make, and will make, once he’s told Simon this thing related to the big announcement he’s going to make in a minute after he’s told Simon something… After a quarter of an hour of that it transpired that he was buying Birmingham, for £30m, or something like that, and then would be buying players, because he owns half of Oxford Street you know, and he’d be winning the league, so he could come back on TalkSport and give it to Jordan, who’s always taken the piss out of him, but wouldn’t be taking the piss now, because of the big announcement, which he did eventually make, but didn’t turn out to be true.

There’s now another, different takeover in the offing, led by former Argentina striker Maxi Lopez, and very professionally made public with an announcement in the stadium car park — Four Seasons Total Landscaping double booked presumably. But what was that I was saying about some blood in the water? Here comes ex-Charlton charlatan Matt Southall as part of the package - presumably sniffing the chance of another couple of white Range Rovers on expenses. As more transpires, it seems this isn’t a full takeover at all, it’s just some chancers buying a chunk of the club, with the existing owner remaining in situ. Two different shady foreign owners, Gardner still out of his depth overseeing the football side, rookie manager… Choose the form of the destructor. Matt Southall as CEO. THE CHOICE IS MADE.

Asked what he thought of his team’s chances, Eustace said simply: “We know it’s going to be very difficult.” Fuck me, you worked that much out did you? Worst episode of Poirot ever. No wonder he’s highly rated.

Our prediction: 24th Birmingham’s last six seasons have seen them finish 19th, 19th, 17th, 20th, 18th and 20th in the Championship. They have been chronically, mismanaged on and off the pitch for the best part of a decade. The EFL has, as usual, stood aside and done nothing. They have had multiple near misses, lucky escapes and last-gasp reprieves. They’ve already had one points deduction. This surely catches up with them now. You cannot go on like this. As ever, it’s the fans who suffer, and it’ll be them left behind to pick up the pieces after these rich chancer cunts have finished pissing about with their club. Stuff like this shames the governance of the sport in this country. It simply shouldn’t be allowed.

How it went down: Substantially better than we thought. A seventeenth-place finish may not seem particularly brilliant, or out of the ordinary given their recent league placings, and with the likes of Chong and Hannibal brought into their midfield late in the window you could even argue it was an under performance, but given everything that was going on last summer I think it’s a significant achievement and speaks to John Eustace’s promise as a boss. Lopez and Southall, it transpired, were de factor running the club for a chunk of the last close season despite not owning it — well I guess that’s one way to dodge the “fit and proper” owner test. For this the EFL handed down a two point deduction, suspended for 12 months. That’ll learn em.

18th - Huddersfield (we said 18th, =)

Shit we said: The EFL’s decision to hand the Championship play-off final to a fat mess as his retirement present, and the decisions Jon Moss subsequently came up with on the day, look like they’re going to shaft Huddersfield Town for years to come. Star men Toffolo and Lewis O’Brien have both moved to Forest to rub salt in wounds. Three weeks away from the start of the season Corberan walked away, publishing a typically intricate statement that boiled down to him not agreeing with the direction of travel and wanting to go before things turned nasty. That, to me, sounds like any funds generated from those sales were not going to go back into the team to the extent he felt was required, though Jack Rudoni is an absolute steal at sub-£1m from Wimbledon and I like Kasumu from MK Dons as well. Rudoni will be this summer’s Scott Twine — available for buttons to a division that in 12 months’ time won’t be able to afford him and wondering why they didn’t take the chance when it was sitting there, QPR included. Nevertheless, for all the links to the club, and promises that Schofield had turned down managerial jobs in Europe to stick around, his parachuting straight into the role feels like a cheap option. Once bitten twice shy and all that, but this season looks very tough for them from here.

Our prediction: 18th Beware. Barnsley showed what can happen to a play-off team if you take its inspirational manager and two best players away.

How it went down: Replacing Corberan with Danny Schofield looked a very silly idea indeed, and proved exactly that. Replacing Danny Schofield with man of a thousand accents, often in the same sentence, Mark Fotheringham looked a very silly idea indeed, and proved exactly that. And so, Sharon, it’s time once more, for the Fifteenth Annual Neil Warnock Farewell Tour. Six wins from the final nine games, including nine points out of nine to finish with, and they landed on their wheels exactly where we said they would, pulled over and said what you worried about. See you again next March Neil.

19th - Rotherham (we said 22nd, +3)

Shit we said: Of course, the first thing that’s happened is a lot of the best players Rotherham had in their promotion season have been picked off by monied rivals too lazy and half-arsed to scout them properly in the first place. Michael Smith scored 25 goals in all comps last season, and got 12 in their Championship relegation season too, but has rejected a new deal to move to Sheff Wed where he’ll be joined by centre back Michael Ihiekwe. Freddie Ladapo, who always really looks the part against QPR, is a handy free transfer pick up for Ipswich after 11 goals. That three of them have gone back to League One, two of them to near neighbours Sheff Wed, and none of them for any money that could be re-invested, must be particularly galling.

Chiedozie Ogbene who impressed wide left last season is under contract though, after the club triggered an extension clause. That’s been enough to put off Swansea City’s interest thus far, though they’ve got Flynn Downes money now and won’t be the only ones looking. Dan Barlasar I liked a lot plugging away in the midfield of a relegated Championship team the season before last, and he got nine goals in 40 starts from the middle of the park last season so watch out for him. Ben Wiles alongside him is getting good press.

Basically, it’s the age old problem. There isn’t the budget here to really compete at this level, and the owner Tony Stewart is quite rightly not willing to put the future of the club in jeopardy by going down the same 170%+ wages to turnover ratio as the rest of the division. He’s right, everybody else is wrong, and the Championship and football in this country outside the Premier League in general if there were more owners like him and Accrington’s Andy Holt. The replacements, thus far, are way below Championship level. As you’ll gather from the Hull write up, I think there are better plays kicking around your local pocket park than Tom Eaves, and we all know exactly what they’re getting in Conor Washington. That doesn’t mean both won’t score against QPR this season of course, but that simply says more about us than them. They were very, very direct when last at this level, and I wondered whether Smith departing might change that, though the Eaves signing suggests probably not. McCart is an interesting one — built something of a reputation as a ball playing defender despite playing in unfashionable Scottish sides that often find themselves under the cosh, which bodes well for what he’ll face here. Alongside him though… Grant Hall — wonder if he deems them worthy of him sticking around for all of his contracted hours?

Our prediction: 22nd I love them, their manager, and their owner. I think it would be good for the division, and football in general, if they could punch up a bit more effectively as Luton have done. And you cannot feel anything other than a barrel load of admiration for the way this manager goes about his business, deals with his players, speaks publicly and represents his club during an ugly period in our country’s modern history. But you don’t survive at this level with that front two in my opinion, sorry.

How it went down: Rotherham not only survived, ending six years of yo-yo with the division below, but did it despite Warne joining last summer’s exodus by shifting over to Derby. Exeter’s Matt Taylor, second choice for the job behind Cambridge’s Mark Bonner, oversaw something of a spending spree by Rotherham standards in January with some significant wages added through five loans and the signing of our former sitter enthusiast Jordan Hugill. With Wor Jordan upfront, Ogbene performing down one win and Brentford’s Tariqe Fosu down the other, Rotherham survived by six clear points. It looked a little nervy towards the end — they were grateful for Reading’s points deduction, and once more struggled badly away from home with just two wins — but they got over the line which is all that ever mattered.

21st - Cardiff (we said 19th, -2)

Shit we said: One of the summer’s highlights was watching this half of South Wales work themselves up into a frantic foamy lather over the absolute racing certainty that Gareth Bale was desperate to come here and finish his career slogging through Tuesday night trips to Middlesbrough (yes that is a fixture the EFL has deemed acceptable to have on the Bluebirds’ calendar this year) rather than ease down into retirement on the golf courses of California. Bale, apparently, is the only person within 300 miles of Cardiff who owns a dark Ranger Rover, so whenever one turned up in the club car park the manic circle jerk started in furious earnest — two handers only, this is serious business. All the great Twitter characters were here — the “freelance journalist”, the ”bored intermediary”, the “secret agent”, the Fifa Ultimate Teams boys — and they all knew somebody in Bale’s extended family. Don’t believe them? Have this screenshot from the FlightRadar24 app of a light aircraft moving from somewhere vaguely Spain to somewhere vaguely southern half of the UK. What about that then? Eh? May as well get the monkey heed tattoos booked in now lads, because there’ll be a rush on later.

Bale, and I can’t believe I need to type this, was not coming to Cardiff. I mean, nothing should surprise me about UK group think after Boris Johnson was able to convince people he was one of them and anti-establishment, but still, every now and again, it does amaze me where the internet has taken this place. Who is coming to Cardiff, however, is literally everybody else. If you’re Preston, QPR, Blackburn, Norwich, wondering why you’ve had a quiet summer with few incomings, it’s because they’re all here. All of them. Anybody and everybody of vague Championship standard and approximate age. All of life is here. Morison’s approach to revitalising the sluggish, ageing team he inherited has been to load up WyScout, take three steps back from the computer, produce a machine gun from a holster, and spray the screen with bullets while laughing into the sky. Centre back Cedric Kipre on loan from West Brom makes 12 new arrivals with five weeks of window remaining (12? I was going to do 14 but 12’s alright I guess) — a list that includes two goalkeepers to go with the Dillon Phillips they already have, two right backs, three different central midfielders, two remarkably similar left wingers, and no strikers (apparently they still need a couple of those so hold off printing that squad list just yet). We’re going to need a bigger boat.

There’s some eye-catchers among them. Sheyi Ojo, from Liverpool, at 25, wouldn’t be surprised if that’s one of Beale’s failed Zoom calls. Ollie Tanner from Lewes was all set for Spurs until somebody pointed out his Arsenal-skewed social media focused heavily on all the dreadful things he’d do to Spurs given the chance. The central midfield desperately needed a complete overhaul, and has had one with Vaulks a high profile release, and experienced Championship campaigners Rinomhota and Sawyers added. And there has, to be fair, been a substantial clear out of literal dead weight — the Fourth Road Bridge creaked under the departures of Aden Flint, Marlon Pack and James Collins and they’ve been followed by Alex Smithies, Isaac Vassell, Leandro Bacuna, Josh Murphy, Will Vaulks and others who represent an enormous chunk of salary change.

How you see this all going depends on how optimistic you are on the outcome of heaving a pack of cards into the air. Without a striker, or Max Watters belatedly making the step up, I’d be approaching with a degree of caution and concern. But, hey, the really good news is Aaron Ramsey is talking to Juventus about an early release, so the plane tracker fun might not be over for this summer.

Our prediction: 19th Watch these fuckers suddenly get good now we’ve finally lost faith in them.

How it went down: Steve Morison was given ten games to get his 16 summer signings integrated into an effective team, sacked at the end of a week when they’d won 3-2 at Middlesbrough. Next up was Mark Hudson, whose wife decided to record him breaking the news of his sacking to his young son for TikTok clout. Dean Whitehead then, for a couple of games, never seen a chin like it. Finally, Sabri Lamouchi, who put six wins on the board, four of them away, to secure Championship status thanks purely to Reading having points off. Easily one of the worst teams in the league, certainly as bad as we saw in W12, and incredibly lucky.

22nd - Reading (we said 23rd, +1)

Shit we said: Financially mismanaged clubs in the Championship are ten a penny. Everybody loses money at this level of football. It exists as a chancer’s waiting room — businessmen, frequently from abroad, not rich enough to buy a Premier League club (or savvy enough to develop one) try and buy a Championship club on the cheap and turn it into one by buying Neil Warnock six players. Get there, and you can be Leicester or Wolves. But far more fail, and with the P&S/FFP rules the way they are that failure comes with a prolonged period of blood let and medicine taking. QPR’s CEO Lee Hoos was predicting this years ago, when Sheffield Wednesday were doing their little Carlos Carvalhal worship routine at a Wembley play-off final, and Derby’s Mel Morris still had the EFL “on strings” according to his adoring public. A whole litany of Championship clubs ignoring the rules, betting the house on promotion, and facing dire consequences if they didn’t make it up. For Sheff Wed and Derby that reckoning has come — for Birmingham and Reading, time is surely nigh.

The number to watch for, every time, is the percentage of wages to turnover. A ridiculous number of clubs at this level opposite at north of 100% wages to turnover, including ourselves. If Tony Fernandes was paying the staff at his airline £1.67 for every £1 that came through the door he’d find that ludicrous, ruinous, and stop it immediately, but apparently in football this is fine. When it gets to 200%, however, and stays there for any length of time, then you cannot possibly comply with the rules of the competition you’re playing in. It takes time to work through, there will be hearings and arbitration, there will be “agreed settlements”, you’ll get perverse verdicts, but it catches you eventually.
Reading have been at that 200% mark for too long. It's like they left Diane Abbott in charge of payroll.

Already docked points, and put under an agreed business plan, they can no longer afford to keep the good players they have who have previously done just enough to keep their head above water, nor can they add new ones of sufficient quality. Like Birmingham, there is Chinese ownership here, like Birmingham, they have been almost criminally negligent in destroying the asset they purchased — previously in Reading’s case one of the absolute model clubs in the country under John Madejski’s exemplary stewardship. Among the biggest catastrophes here, apart from turning your transfer business over to Kia Joorabchian, is Reading have had serious, significant, talented sellable assets under contract and under their roof and bollocksed up every single one. Omar Richards and Rob Dickie were both here and left for nothing, Michael Olise had a ludicrous release clause of just £8m, once again this summer their entire midfield, all mid-20s, has walked out for free including John Swift one of the best ten players in the league. That should have been £40m-worth of footballer there, a transformative figure. They got £8m for the lot. Under an EFL ‘agreed business plan’ their most high profile summer signing is Jeff Hendrick, and I expended more energy on here writing about that cunt last season than he ever did on the pitch. Joe Lumley will keep goal and, I just, can’t. Mark Bowen is back involved here now too — because of course Mark Bowen is back involved here now. Maybe Jose Bosingwa could make the lunches?

Shane Long is a romantic returner at 35, but six goals in 52 appearances in 2016/17 is by far his best return in any of the last six seasons. He arrives nursing a record of 20 goals in his last 205 appearances, and has scored just twice in each of the last two campaigns. Their only hope here is that Meite and Joao, a dangerous Championship forward line on its day and injured for much of last year, stays at the club, gets fit, stays fit, looks half interested, and scores enough goals to paper the cracks again. Joao will surely attract interest from those clubs with money but short of strikers we wrote about in part one, and is already injured again in any case.

This time, like Birmingham, I don’t see it.

Our prediction: 23rd You can bob, you can weave, you can get lucky, you can escape, you can “negotiate settlements” but eventually it catches up with you. Where Derby and Sheff Wed have gone before, Birmingham and Reading will surely follow, if not now, if we’re wrong, then soon.

How it went down: Exactly that really. I’d have relegated them for calling their shopping centre The Oracle alone, but if you handle your finances like this, leave Paul Ince Is A Wanker in charge of a Championship team in 2023, and have Jeff Hendrick as the fulcrum of your midfield, then you get everything you deserve. Look forward to seeing the cocaine creche rushing the fence next to the away end next season as they snatch a late equaliser against Cheltenham.

23rd - Blackpool (we said 20th, -3)

Shit we said: Neil Critchley was, in so many ways, the perfect partner for what was essentially the building of a whole new football club. Practically, coming from Liverpool’s academy he had an in depth knowledge of the prospects dropping out of the puppy farms and was able to attract and build a promotion and Championship consolidation around them — Ellis Simms didn’t return at the higher level but his loss was covered, Josh Bowler was one of the outstanding players in the whole division. Emotionally, he spoke word perfectly about bringing everybody together on the archetypal, cliched “journey”, and would walk around the pitch at the end of games making little love heart gestures at people. AND, THEN, HE, LEFT!

It’s profoundly depressing for the state of the Championship that while Premier League assistants such as Michael Beale come into our league and get top jobs, our managers — and Neil Critchley and Mark Warburton were two of the better ones — can only move up into bibs, balls and cones jobs at that level. Especially so for Blackpool, who probably could have stomached something like the link with Watford coming to pass, but struggle to get their head around how picking up after Steven Gerrard represents a step up.

Now, as everybody knows, when you’re in love with somebody, and they seem perfect, and they’re good with your kids, and they make little heart gestures at you, and it’s going well, and then they suddenly up and leave for some rich tart down the road, there is a course of bereavement and loss you have to go through. The first stage of this is a big fat rebound. What you need now is some fucking tattooed meathead, completely the opposite of what you had previously, who’s treated you like shit at least once before, and reckons he’s changed now but really he’s always been keener on your next door neighbour which you’re fully aware of. Step forward Michael Appleton, a former Preston player, who was forgiven those sins once before by the natives here but ended up being their shortest managerial reign in history when he resigned after 11 games to go and shack up with another Lancashire club — Blackburn Rovers.

He crashed and burned there but has since forged a very good reputation as a coach. At Oxford he promoted them to League One and kept them there, with two EFL Trophy finals to boot. At unfancied Lincoln, on a pitiful budget, he took them all the way to a League One play-off final where they were beaten by Critchley’s Blackpool — remember though, Brennan Johnson on loan in League One was something of a cheat code.

I don’t know. I’m uneasy about this one. The shock of the Critchley departure is substantial — he built this team, he was the inspiration. The better players — Bowler, Keshi Anderson - are yet to be picked off, though four weeks of transfer window remains and there have been no serious incomings either. Gary Madine is popular here, but I’ve seen Championship teams rely on him for enough goals to stay up before and, well, Bolton Wanderers. Appleton does not have enough credit in the bank with the public here if things start to go badly — that raucous home crowd is only a good thing if it’s on your side. Shipping six times in two friendlies at home to the worst Everton team in 20 years and Glasgow Rangers in pre-season doesn’t bode overly well — with the usual caveats about not reading too much into pre-season.

I think this could be a difficult second album.

Our prediction: 20th

How it went down: Difficult second album indeed. The uneasy relationship with Michael Appleton, who’d walked out on them for Blackpool when employed at Bloomfield Road previously, ended halfway through a campaign destined to end in relegation. With Josh Bowler snatched away by Nottingham Forest for no good reason at all there just wasn’t the necessary goals and quality in this team to survive. Dragging Mick McCarthy out of the television studio to rescue them felt desperate — typically the 6-1 drubbing of QPR was one of only two wins he managed in three months. Now back in League One, they’ve taken another old boyfriend back in with the re-appointment of Critchley for 23/24.

24th - Wigan (we said 21st, -3)

Shit we said: ow this is an interesting experiment… bar Ryan Nyambe, a very decent pick up from Blackburn, Wigan have signed nobody and lost nobody. They’re going to take the team that won League One, and go with it, hoping it’s talent and togetherness that have taken it this far can move it on to the higher level and consolidate. It reminds me a bit of our Second Division promotion side under Ian Holloway, which essentially only had Georges Santos added to it after promotion. That team struggled at the higher level initially, then went on a remarkable run of nine wins from ten games.

Several of them have been tried at this level before and not overly impressed. Talismanic midfielder Max Power for one. Josh Maggennis, three goals in 18 appearances last season after a switch from Hull, another — he used to be a goalkeeper you know. Keane, of course, like we say. I once thought Gwion Edwards was a superb pick up by Ipswich from Peterborough, but he bombed — gets a second chance now, but has been injured for almost all of the summer. Jordan Cousins, my word, a ghost of this preview’s big calls of the past right there. They’ll need at least some of these to make more of their second (third, fourth, fifth) chances to avoid a struggle.

I’m more excited to see what Callum Lang is all about. Wigan held onto him through administration and Covid, he did more than his fair share of time on loan at Morecambe, Oldham, Shrewsbury and Motherwell, and then bagged 18 goals for the Latics last season.

Professional piss boiler James McClean is still plugging away here, now 33 years old, so we’ll get the dubious pleasure of irate blokes yelling “where’s your poppy” at him in the middle of March again.

And, as with all these previews, the Premier League clubs are still on foreign tours. They’ve got to come back, do another week of pre-season, start their campaign, and name 25-man squads, all while we’re playing seven competitive games before the end of the transfer window. Wigan, like most others, will I’m sure be nudging big time neighbours for a borrow of one or two starlets and rejects and who gets who could go a long way to determining final league placement.

It's going to be tight, but I think there are other clubs in a sufficiently big mess to keep them up.

Our prediction: 21st

How it went down: An act of dramatic self immolation. While Sunderland used League One’s more favourable FFP rules to put together a young team capable of kicking on in the Championship with minor loan signing surgery, Wigan built a clogging team of hard working and honest pros capable of bludgeoning the third tier but in need of serious change to compete in our league without the money to make the necessary changes. They looked good at Loftus Road and were unlucky to lose, Everton loanee Nathan Broadhead the pick of the bunch that day, but within weeks he was at Ipswich and manager Leam Richardson was jettisoned. They then, and I can’t believe I’m actually typing this, gave the job to Kolo Toure. Eight games without a win, including a three-match test series with Luton, and that piece of idiocy was reverse. Sean Maloney did some bits and pieces as boss number three, including the inevitable 1-0 win at home to QPR, but they were dead on arrival really, sinking not only back into League One but a whole load of financial meltdown and point deduction hell that has sadly become the norm in these parts.

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