Our mammoth run down and in depth look at the 23 other teams in the Championship starts, as always, with the teams the bookies think will be struggling against relegation this year. Read on to find out if we agree…

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 clubs we’re about to talk about here, is available to all three sub tiers to listen/watch now by clicking here.

In this section…
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17 - Watford
18 - Cardiff
19 - Portsmouth
20 - Charlton
21 - Preston
22 - Blackburn
23 - Bolton
24 - Lincoln

Lincoln 4/5 (relegation odds

Last Season – 1st in League One There’s a lot to say about a club that spent six years in non-league, up to as recently as 2017, but now find themselves and their 10,669-capacity stadium in the second tier of English football for the first time since 1961.

A lot to admire about Michael Skubala’s defensively impregnable (41 conceded in 46 games), super hard working, mega-high press team which won League One last season with 103 points – 12 clear of Cardiff in second, 26 away from Stockport in third.

This all achieved following a summer transfer window in which the squad was stripped of several key players including Ethan Erhahon who went to Bolton, Sean Roughan who signed for Huddersfield, and most pointedly Jovon Makama with whom Norwich will now surely make a handsome profit on their initial £1m investment. Lost the core of the team, got better. Loads better. This is a well run club that doesn’t rely on individuals.

If you want to sum it up best, when Lincoln City start their Championship campaign at Middlesbrough this Saturday they will go into that unbeaten in 29 league games. The last time The Imps were beaten in a league game, by anybody, was on November 22 last year when they went down 3-2 to a last-minute goal at Wycombe.

That was one of five defeats suffered in League One across the nine months. In their last 29 fixtures they won 23 of those including two separate four-game winning sequences and another of six. They won 13 of their last 15 games. A ridiculous 75 points from a possible 87 available across nearly six months of football.

That is a lot, innit?

Ins >>> Andrei Coubis, 22, CB, Cluj, £2.5m >>> Callum Elder, 31, LB, Derby, Free >>> Tanto Olaofe, 26, CF, Charlton, Free Joe Gauci, 26, GK, Villa, Loan >>> Mason Melia, 18, CF, Spurs, Loan

Outs >>> Jack Moylan, 24, AM, Cardiff, £2.5m >>> MK Kamson-Kamara, 20, CB, Hearts, Free >>> Erik Ring, 24, LW, Kilmarnock, Undisclosed >>> JJ McKiernan, 24, CM, Bromley, Undisclosed >>> Zane Okoro, 19, RW, Tranmere, Loan >>> Zach Jeacock, 25, GK, Northampton, Loan >>> Oisin Gallagher, 21, CB, Barnet, Loan

This Season: As Lincoln City come back to the second tier of English football for the first time in 65 years they will inevitably be greeted by a string of bookies and season previewers tipping them to go straight back down. This despite them winning League One at an absolute canter and easily being the best team in that division. As we saw when Plymouth came up as champions ahead of Kieran McKenna’s Ipswich, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re the best prepared team for the Championship.

The financial gulf and the money you basically have to lose just to tread water in this godforsaken league is enormous – Portsmouth’s Michael Eisner the latest owner of a promoted club to call the Championship’s finances a “catastrophe”. The average loss in our league is £18m a year, in the one below it’s £7m. Lincoln, for most of my youth growing up in the county, weren’t even been the biggest club in Lincolnshire and have mostly played the poorer, lower placed relation to the hefty might of Grimsby Town and Scunthorpe United. It is a significant, maybe remarkable, achievement for them just to be here ten years on from playing Conference football.

The other hot take is the best thing about them last year – Bielsa-bud Michael Skubala – has now been poached by Bristol City. A real shame from a neutral point of view because I was genuinely fascinated to see what the Imps might do at this level with his unique brand of super high pressing football which brought them a 29-game unbeaten run to end last term. Going not only internal for the appointment, but the lesser spotted joint managership of Chris Cohen and Tom Shaw, feels a little bit romance over realism and doomed to failure (although given The Cowleys brought them out of non-league, it’s not an altogether unprecedented set up at Sincil Bank). The club are pitching Skubala as “just one corner of the triangle” and in Cohen and Shaw the other two are still in place, so what you worried about?

We’re predicting they will indeed go down, in perhaps the brave but ultimately futile way Rotherham United have found this league one too many every time they’ve ended up in it. But let me put a slightly different point of view and case for the defence forward…

Lincoln City are basically the best run club in this country right now. They were already punching when in League One and yet they’ve happily been there for seven years, never in any relegation trouble, never lower than 17th. Even before Michael Skubala arrived and put them over the top, The Imps have threatened to come out of that division before, finishing fifth and losing the 2021 play-off semi-final under Michael Appleton, and narrowly missing out in seventh Skubala’s first year.

This is not necessarily a story of one genius manager and they’re now bereft without him. There are very solid foundations here that have sustained five changes of bosses across ten years that have seen them go from non-league to the Championship. This has been overseen and funded by South African chairman Clive Nates (who has been succeeded by former San Diego Padres owner Ron Fowler but remains on the board) and CEO Liam Scully will be attracting admiring glances from elsewhere with the job that he’s doing as well.

They have made it a point of their identity to be as open, honest and transparent with the support base about everything they’re doing. Scully has an account on the club’s main message board where he addresses supporters directly and answers questions as they arise. They might not have the best team in the Championship, but the fan zone outside is second to none. Scully was told on arrival it wouldn’t be possible because “that’s where the directors park their cars”. There has been a real mind shift here over time.

They’ve made it part of their mission to involve the people of the city, bring them in and go on the journey together. The official website carries in detail profiles of the board and executive team – who they are, where they’ve come from, what their experience is, why they’re here, what they do. Compare this to our communications and relationship with our club – how little we know about or hear from Richard Reilly, for instance.

They don’t want for experience: captain Tendayi Darikwa is 35, former Luton man Sonny Bradley gets an unlikely Championship return at 34, Callum Elder (clue’s in the name) has joined from Derby, and Adam Reach is kicking around here these days presumably still trying to score from the halfway line (grow up). Conor McGrandles runs the midfield after an earlier £1m career move to Norwich didn’t really work out. At the other end of the scale former Fulham keeper George Wickens is highly rated at 24 years old and the best record in League One last season (also, four assists rather puts our full backs to shame).

There has been a record transfer fee paid for gigantic defender Andrei Coubis who started at AC Milan and Sampdoria and has three caps for Romania in amongst his time as a Bond villain, but further additions will be needed in wide areas and up front where Ben House and Rob Street are more work horses off the ball than threats with it and promotion was built on three players with ten goals (Hackett, Moylan, Street) than one with 30. The loan market, where as we know Justin Obikwu and Alfie Lloyd spent time here last season, could come into play here and Mason Melia is already incoming from Spurs.

Oh, and another thing - you think you’ve seen a long throw before? Batten down the hatches and prepare for incoming from Tom Hamer. They even have an air raid siren at home games.

But the reality of their situation is brought home by Jack Moylan. A week ago this preview said: “If you were a fan of Ethan Glabraith at Leyton Orient then prepare to meet new Republic of Ireland international Jack Moylan – get in now rather than 12 months’ time when Stoke are trying to pay someone a bazillion pounds for him.” That he’s since signed for Cardiff for a couple of million quid, a team that finished below Lincoln in League One last season, says a lot about the battle of resources the Imps face this year.

They’re used to losing their best players and steadily improving anyway. They’re used to playing without the ball and will surprise a lot of arrogant, ‘bigger clubs’ at a tight stadium with long throws and giant Romanians ahoy. It’ll be a huge ask to continue that at this level, but Derby have already been knocked over in the League Cup so underestimate this lot at your peril.

Manager – Chris Cohen and Tom Shaw You’re not looking at the whole triangle, Jenny.

Oppo View – Gary @StaceyWestBlog

Prediction: 24th (@LoftusIQ 22nd) Unoriginal.

Charlton 6/4 (relegation odds

Last Season – 19th (we said 20th +1) Called to within a place and very much job done for the Addicks who were looking to secure consecutive seasons of Championship football for the first time in ten years.

Having been distinctly second best in a dire televised 0-0 draw at The Valley, a result achieved only because Joe Walsh had his best game of the season for the R’s, it’s a bit rich of QPR to comment, but Charlton wouldn’t win many prizes for aesthetics. Eight of their 13 wins were by a 1-0 scoreline and they struggled to score goals all season – only two teams scored fewer than their 44 and two of the three relegated sides scored more. Where we perhaps are more qualified to comment is a side-eyed remark that this sort of thing will happen when your strikers are Charlie Kelman and Lyndon Dykes.

To be fair Kelman did get seven in 19 Championship starts either side of a winter injury which is reasonably respectable, and more importantly still those goals won Charlton eight points without which they would have been relegated. Grandma, wheels, bike, perhaps, but take away the points deductions at Leicester and West Brom and/or an April home win against Hull (their only success in the final nine rounds of Championship action) and this would have been even tighter than it already was.

The League One promotion was built on the defence, at the heart of which former Liverpool trainee Lloyd Jones remains the outstanding performer and clear player of the year in 25/26. Ten teams that finished above Charlton in the league conceded more than their 58 goals, including promoted Hull (66) and seventh placed Wrexham (65). The Addicks kept 13 clean sheets (three more than QPR) and 11 of their 13 wins were to nil.

It’s a team that knows what it’s good at, despite Thomas Kaminski’s frequent wobbles in goal. Stick their backs to the wall with a simple game plan and this ship can repel all boarders for considerable lengths of time. They took four points off promoted Hull, won away at Middlesbrough, won 3-0 at Ipswich, drew at home to Coventry, drew at Southampton, while only drawing at Sheff Wed and Oxford and losing at home to Leicester. When the onus falls on them to be expressive and attack they tend to come a cropper.

Having looked long since safe they played their way back into trouble by winning only one of the last nine and losing four in a row at home, but much of that could possibly be attributed to their other big issue – an ongoing chronic injury list. In the end a hard fought 2-1 win against Hull in the penultimate fixture meant they’d already done just about enough. And that’s fine, for now.

Ins >>> Karlan Grant, 28, CF, West Brom, Free >>> Danny McNamara, 27, RB, Millwall, Free >>> Nathaniel Chalobah, 31, DM, Sheff Wed, Free >>> Milenic Alli, 26, LW, Luton, Undisclosed >>> Ivan Mesik, 25, CB, Heracles Almelo (Netherlands), Undisclosed >>> Billy Koumetio, 23, CB, Dundee, Undisclosed

Outs >>> Lyndon Dykes, 30, CF, Millwall, Free >>> Terry Taylor, 25, DM, Stevenage, Free >>> Alex Mitchell, 24, CB, Plymouth, Undsclosed >>> Macaulay Gillesphey, 30, CB, Bradford, Undisclosed >>> Karoy Anderson, 21, CM, Blackpool, Undisclosed >>> Kaheim Dixon, 21, RW, Novi Pazar (Serbia), Undisclosed >>> Gassan Ahadme, 25, CF, Cambridge, Loan >>> Tanto Olaofe, 26, CF, Lincoln, Loan >>> Zach Mitchell, 21, CB, St Johnstone, Loan >>> Keenan Gough, 20, DM, Bristol Rovers, Loan >>> Luke Berry, 33, CM, Released

This Season: Nobody liked Nathan Jones’ Luton (because nobody likes Nathan Jones, or Luton) but you couldn’t help admire how he and they built that club up from League One to the Premier League across two different managerial spells.

In any other profession than sports Jones’ mad ranty press appearances would have had him placed in some sort of secure unit – scaling the away end at Swansea and having to be chased down from the rafters by an employee with a broom handle one week, crying about teams over celebrating on his patch the next. It was only when he got to Southampton that the media realised he existed and started asking questions like ‘why has this guy been talking for 20 minutes about how he could have been a PE teacher and married a nice girl in the valleys?’.

Luton, though, in the moments Jones wasn’t firing a gun into the air (or turning the thing on himself) were a bloody good side. Carlton Morris and Elijah Adebayo up front, Alfie Doughty out wide, they would hang ball after ball after ball after ball in on you. They would turn you round, they would pen you in, and they would exhaust you. QPR had a better record against them than most – three wins and a draw from five delightful trips to Kenilworth Road – but even amidst that sequence the pressing became so persistently intense that Jimmy Dunne ended up putting through his own goal.

Jones has made no secret of his desire to recreate that at Charlton – Thomas Kaminski, Amari’i Bell, Reece Burke and Millenic Alli have all moved here from there. And yet this Charlton team is so very different. A team that doesn’t want the ball, doesn’t want to attack, cannot press. It sits in, with a back five, and tries to nick 1-0 wins. It goes long, sure, but it’s often just a big punt up to Myles Leaburn or last season Lyndon Dykes, with little around them to make the most of any flick on Leaburn (deliberately) or Dykes (accidentally) may achieve.

Jones was such a positive manager at Luton. Direct, long, attritional, sure. At times it was like staring at the sun, without the warmth. But they went to win, they went to score goals. Charlton, don’t, really. To an extent that’s working with what you’ve got – he inherited a defensively strong team here and the best players in it are defenders. You’re not going to be creating much with a midfield of Conor Coventry, Sonny Carey and Greg Docherty and adding Nathaniel Chalobah to that suggests downward momentum rather than upward. But even in situations like the home game with Sheff Utd in January, where the Blades had two men sent off before half time, Jones was more bothered about shoring up and seeing out a 1-0. Against nine men.

It’s partly this, and the tough time they gave him before he turned round their League One fortunes, that leads to a perhaps love-hate relationship between Jones and The Valley locals. He is a difficult man to like – is that camera on me, right let me know when the director has signalled and I’ll sink to my knees and offer a prayer – but after a promotion and a consolidation in year one you’d think there’d be more love and affection in the air here. There isn’t, and there isn’t likely to be the longer it goes on with the best you can ever hope for is cobbling together enough 1-0s to make sure you still get to play Birmingham again next year.

The signing of conventional right back Danny McNmara from Millwall and the switch to a back four in pre-season perhaps signals a change in approach from the five-at-the-back-and-pray approach. Whether they’ve got the players further forward to support a more expansive, attractive style we’ll wait and see. Karlan Grant’s free transfer arrival from West Brom is unlikely to move the needle. Kelman will miss the first few months injured. Harvey Knibbs may be one for the plus column – an exciting signing from Reading a year ago and a very unlucky first 12 months with injury.

Further squad building is perhaps complicated by the potential offing of yet another change of ownership. Global Football Partners and their Charlton supporting chairman Gavin Carter had offered stability and the dreaded “five year plan” in rescuing the club from a tumultuous decade of Roland Duchâtelet, Thomas Sandgaard and the ever-detestable Matt Southall, but The Guardian reports a sales deck is being circulated to what would potentially be the club’s fifth owner in six years.

Not ideal as the team attempts to negotiate a tricky Championship second album which has recently proved beyond Rotherham, Burton, Blackpool and Plymouth. For it all, Jones is probably their best chance of achieving that.

Manager – Nathan Jones Celebrates in a certain way.

Oppo View – Louis Mendez @LouisMend “Last season was not straightforward but ultimately a success as Charlton are playing in the Championship again this term. They started well – fifth in early November. But a run of consecutive losses saw them collapse to 19th by early December. By the time we headed to The Den in late January we’d won just twice in 13 and a 4-0 hammering by Millwall felt like a real cliff-edge moment for the club and Nathan Jones. Happily, it served as a reset and Charlton went on to lost just twice in the next ten.

“My gut feeling is that we’ll be involved in a real scrap this year. The last nine games of last term really hammered home just how tough this division is and the areas in which Charlton come up short. I’d be happy with survival.”

Prediction: 20th (@LoftusIQ 21st)

Bolton 6/4

Last Season – 5th in League One It has been a long time between drinks for once Premier League mainstay Bolton Wanderers.

A double dip from Championship to League Two between 2019 and 2021 came amidst a financial collapse a long time coming following that top flight overspend and subsequent chronic mismanagement by the usual Ken Anderson collection of hangers on, chancers and leaches who always turn up to pick over a carcass in those situations. It was always likely to be a long road back from there, and so it proved with a protracted five-year stint in League One which included two prior play-off failures before this summer’s thumping 4-1 victory over Stockport County at Wembley.

Former QPR centre back Ian Evatt oversaw much of that, in charge for five years which included the climb out of League Two, but it took a switch to Steven Schumacher to get the Trotters over the line. Schumacher, once hot managerial property for the similar League One promotion job he did at Plymouth Argyle, now right man in the right place at the right price for Bolton after he’d been the latest poor unfortunate soul to be chewed up and spat out by the mediocrity machine at Stoke City.

Even then it was not plain sailing in a division that Lincoln absolutely ran away with and Cardiff successfully bounced straight back at the first time of asking. Having lost previous top marksman Dion Charles to big spending (but pretty clueless) Huddersfield, the Trotters started the season with defeat at Stockport and then five consecutive draws on the other side of a settling win against Plymouth.

There was (much) better to come in the autumn where Wanderers at one point won ten of 13 games in league and cup but another tough period over Christmas saw them beaten by Wycombe, Peterborough and Mansfield in short order while a 4-0 FA Cup exit to Ian Holloway’s League Two Swindon Town did not make a for a good day out. That coincided with Lincoln and Cardiff getting up to cruising altitude and meant that even though Schumacher’s team at one stage went 13 games unbeaten (W7 D6), including a home victory against Wycombe they were losing 2-0 with two minutes left to play, they were left to duke out the play offs for the third time in five years.

Not in good form for them either – two wins from ten going into the knockout – but Bradford were seen off over two legs without a goal being conceded and what looked like an evenly matched final on paper quickly became a literal whitewash as Bolton hit four with Ruben Rodrigues particularly impressive.

More relief than celebration in the end. The league games at Fleetwood are over, for now.

Ins >>> Luca Stephenson, 22, RB, Liverpool, £800k >>> Gaizka Larrazabal, 28, RB, Casa Pia, Free >>> David Watson, 21, CM, Kilmarnock, Free >>> Ben Davies, 30, CB, Rangers, Free >>> Akin Famewo, 27, CB, Hull, Undisclosed >>> Kyliane Dong, 21, LW, Augsburg, Loan

Outs >>> Szabolcs Schon, 25, LW, ETO (Hungary), £500k >>> George Johnston, 27, CB, Luton, Free >>> Kyle Dempsey, 30, CM, Port Vale, Free >>> Sonny Sharples-Ahmed, 21, CM, Hednesford, Undisclosed >>> Richard Taylor, 25, CB, Bromley, Loan >>> Lewis Temple, 21, CB, Oldham, Loan >>> Sam Inwood, 20, CB, Swindon, Loan >>>Jordi Osei-Tutu, 27, RB, Released >>> Carlos Mendes, 27, RW, Released

This Season: I remember writing this preview of Steven Schumacher’s promoted Plymouth team and confidently predicting the Pilgrims would definitely stay in the Championship because of one reason – they were always going to score goals. Morgan Whittaker, Finn Azaz and Ryan Hardie were always likely to get you enough to stay above the dotted line and lo that trio contributed 38 between them (19 for Whittaker alone) to a job-done 21st place finish even with Schumacher bolting for Stoke midway through (they were 16th at that point).

I worry about Schumacher’s Bolton for the same reason – who’s scoring you a goal here? Now, naturally, with QPR second up on the fixture list I am merely teeing us up here for one of those chastening summer shellackings at Loftus Road that we specialise in and which Bolton themselves have metred out in the past – Gary Cahill scored a bicycle kick for fuck’s sake.

Nevertheless, when I look down the scorers from last season it’s topped out by Mason Burstow who has returned to parent club Hull and since joined Sheff Wed, Brighton’s excellent Amario Cozier-Duberry who is now back with his parent and subject of £5m bids from the likes of Anderlecht and Rangers, and Johnny Kenny who got six in 11 starts on loan from Celtic and is back at Park Head. Without them the cupboard looks very bare here, and reinforcements so far have focused almost exclusively on the defence. Sam Dalby scored 11 times and does remain, but another ex-Plymouth man Ibrahim Cissoko is also no more. Eek.

There have been plenty of reinforcements in defence – experienced Spanish full back Gaizka Larrazabal ahead of Liverpool loanee Luca Stephenson on that side to replace Cyrus Christie, veteran Ben Davies from Rangers with Akin Famewo from Hull for the middle of the back line with Chris Forino who you may remember Gareth Ainsworth was very keen to sign for QPR when he was at Wycombe. However, theirs is a very mediocre collection of goalkeepers led, in theory, by career number two Jack Bonham. Bolton were allegedly in for James Beadle who ended up back at Birmingham, so expect movement there, or prepare for trouble if not.

Having decided to leave Lincoln for the supposedly bigger club on a free last summer, midfielder Ethan Erhahon will be relieved his new club followed the Imps into the Championship – albeit in the slipstream of their 103-point title charge. He might be worthy of a chance at the new level. Ruben Rodrigues, the former Notts County player who we loved during his time at Oxford, is back in the division in Bolton colours. David Watson is a bit of coup for the midfield from the SPL amidst heavy competition for his signature.

It’s going forward, though, that you worry about Wanderers for now. Joel Randell (at Peterborough) and John McAtee (at Grimsby and Luton) have been highly rated second striker prospects in the past but never cut it in the second tier. Plymouth’s Bim Pepple is a target after 16 goals in 23 starts for the Pilgrims downstairs, and they were the best League One side for xG at both ends of the pitch last year, but this forward line looks pitiful to me. Schumacher has cut a frustrated summer figure, at pains to tell BBC Radio Manchester new minority investment into the club will not mean any more coin for him.

Sort the forwards out and they stand a chance but for now they look relegation fodder.

Manager – Steven Schumacher Would really help if Soccerbase could make its mind up on whether this is a ‘v’ or a ‘ph’.

Oppo View – Chris @ChrisFlanaganFFT “Last season was an up and down campaign that ended perfectly, with the promotion we'd been trying to get for five years. We won fewer games compared to any of the previous four seasons, and only got 75 points to finish fifth, but did what we couldn't in previous campaigns - navigated the play-offs brilliantly.

“I think we have to be realistic and expect a battle to stay in the league, but hopefully a successful one. Our manager's tactical nous could be crucial.”

Prediction: 23rd (@LoftusIQ 23rd) One of those difficult ones because if they go through this season with this forward line they’ll likely go down, but there’s ambition here and lots of transfer window left so they almost certainly won’t. For now though…

Cardiff 6/4

Last Season – 2nd in League One There are enough carcasses littering League One (and Two for that matter) to tell you bouncing back to the Championship straight away after a relegation is not as easy as all that. Derby were down there for two years, Huddersfield are going into a third, Bolton did six (one in League Two), Coventry eight (one in League Two), Portsmouth 12 (four in the bottom tier), while clubs like Bradford, Grimsby, Tranmere, Oldham, Port Vale and others have never made it back (and only one looks ever likely to do so).

Particularly when the Championship relegation was as obviously on the cards for as long as it was at Cardiff. Just look at the QPR results here – five unbeaten in this corner of South Wales, four of them wins. Even Gareth Ainsworth got a QPR away win at Cardiff. Dreadful owner, clueless backroom, an ever-quickening rotation of terrible managers (ooh, yeh, Mark Hudson, that oughta do it) and player recruitment akin to when your gran looked after you as kids and you got her to play Fifa for a giggle (yes, Aaron Ramsey, you’ve heard of him haven’t you nanna, that nice looking boy from Arsenal, £40k a week that’s it).

Credit and testament to Brian Barry-Murphy, therefore, turning this around so quickly and in such attractive style as well. So notably progressive in the budget-less backwater of Rochdale that Man City picked him up to manager their development squad, he’s a name that’s done the rounds among the trendies for sometime but really needed testing in a big job with some proper football. He’s passed the first part of that test with flying colours – somebody who can get 47 appearances (albeit 19 of them as sub) out of Chris Willock’s porcelain hamstrings must be some sort of miracle granting fairy/drug dealer.

Led from the front by 14-goal top scorer Yousef Salech (one to watch), there were nine goals for Rubin Colwill who finally stated to fill out his long-held potential, and the ever-reliable Callum Robinson knocked in ten in all comps for good measure.

The Bluebirds really were off to the races right away. They didn’t lose a game until September 20, and won eight of the ten that took place before that. Things wobbled a little through October and November but really only Lincoln’s extraordinary, record-breaking 29-match unbeaten run stood between them and a title they’d surely have won in any other year, ultimately finishing second on 91 points. Discounting the nonsense 5-4 at Mansfield on the final day, when it was all over and everybody was drunk, Cardiff have lost two of their last 25 games.

And they’re back. Deservedly so too.

Ins >>> Jack Moylan, 24, CM, Lincoln, £3m >>> Nathan Trott, 27, GK, Copenhagen, £1.5m >>> Thierry Katsukunya, 20, CB, Villa, Free

Outs >>> Ryan Wintle, 29, DM, MK Dons, Free >>> Jesper Daland, 26, CB, Viking, Loan

This Season: Lincoln may have streaked away from Cardiff at the top of League One but the difference in resources and Championshipness has shown through immediately this summer with the Bluebirds poaching the Imps’ best player Jack Moylan. Prepare the Jordan Cousins Memorial ‘Pound For Pound The Best Signing This Transfer Window’ Medal of Honour, I think this boy’s a special player. Like Ethan Glabraith last summer, best to get him now for this amount before Stoke spunk a load four times the size on him next year, and I’m somewhat surprised it’s Cardiff that have been able to do that. I’d have loved him at QPR. A real punch to the gooch for poor Lincoln.

Other than that, business has been steady to the point of non-existence, though that was the same this time last year. Making goalkeeper Nathan Trott’s move permanent was probably priority one (a Bermuda-born, West Ham academy graduate, signed from Copenhagen, go figure). Cardiff have plenty of Championship experience already and, crucially, goals the other promoted sides don’t seem to possess in my eyes. Salech ahead of Colwill, Moylan in behind, that feels like lovely stuff to me. And, look, as with all these previews, there will inevitably be further arrivals, likely on loan once the Premier League start handing out waifs who didn’t make the 25-man squads. Barry Murphy is the sort of manager the puppy farms will love to send their hoarded cherubs to for the winter.

It’ll be an interesting examination of BBM. We’ve banged on about the sharp about face in footballing trends enough over the last 12 months, but when even Thomas Tuchel is abandoning the possession-based short-passing stuff in favour of big and strong and long to such an extent even Noni Madueke gets to go to an actual real life World Cup you know it’s a thing. As Chris Davies found out at Birmingham a year ago, it’s all very well pisballing about completing 600+ passes while dicking Barnsley 4-0 but I’m afraid the Championship is a crueller proving ground and Cardiff have far fewer resources than Davies did to get ready for that.

All the same, this is a guy that has managed to coax success out of Cardiff. Cardiff. Same chairman, same muppet show upstairs, same giant empty stadium and grumpy locals, and yet he’s just calmly walked in there and spun the whole thing around in a job that swallowed half a dozen of his predecessors whole. They hadn’t even made a signing by the time last season kicked off. Didn’t seem to matter, just change the way you’re doing things. Cardiff have long talked up their youth and then spent the summer begging for the arrival of washed up, injury prone old twats to come in and play ahead of them. BBM gave them their wings, and off they flew. Who knew?

We’ve often said ‘what manager wants manager gets doesn’t work at QPR’ and that clubs would do well to build structures around bosses that make them more expendable (for they will, surely, always, sooner or later be expended) but at Cardiff it’s the opposite. You guys are fucking morons, give this bloke the keys and let him crack on.

Best of the promoted teams for me and should be absolutely fine given the other drek at the bottom of this league. Keep an eye out for 20-year-old centre half Dylan Lawlor, although at press time West Ham are having a sniff.

Manager – Brian Barry-Murphy One of those process types.

Oppo View – View from the Ninian @VFTNinian “League One was great. The previous year in the Championship was dismal, depressing, and there were only a few bright moments and it had been a few seasons of us circling the drain before the inevitable relegation came. League One brought new grounds, old friends, new opponents, and wins. From seeing two wins live in 24/25, I didn’t see us lose in 25/26, and saw us get promoted in second place. The football we played was a joy to watch, and we’re back in the Championship looking forward to the new season.

“When you look at the teams in the Championship this year, it’s so open. We did our podcast predictions and some of the teams could easily be in the running for promotion or relegation. And with a six-team playoff system, a couple wins in a row could be the difference between mid-table and a chance at promotion. I’d love to think we could challenge for a top-eight place but I’d also be content with consolidating on mid-table. We’ve just come back up, we need to get back to grips with a very competitive league and we can grow from there.”

Prediction: 18th (@LoftusIQ 17th) I do just wonder whether they might be a bit idealistic and possession-based for their own good in a league where, particularly away, they’re going to have to do without the ball for a long period of time. Lincoln’s directness and more physical approach may fair better.

Preston 4/1

Last Season – 14th (we said 22nd +8) Ah Preston, Cliff to our Norm. Trapped together drinking away a life of mediocrity, finding solace in the same pints in the same pubs and getting inappropriately aroused when anything slightly less mundane happens (ooooh, a foreign pre-season friendly, fetch me a moist towel).

Perhaps we should stop complaining about 12 straight years of trips to Deepdale. After all, we’d won four of six visits - drawing one of the other two - prior to last season’s trip, and should surely have been victorious again but for Daniel Bennie’s sitter-a-thon in the second half. Richard Kone’s all action centre forward display certainly deserved more than a point that day.

In many ways this mirrors Preston’s decline. Deepdale used to be a horrible place to go, particularly for QPR. Rangers made 13 visits without winning between 1980 and the week before the Covid19 lockdowns began. More recently it’s been a banker three points for even a team as notoriously travelsick as ours.

When Lucas Anderson struck in injury time to win the 2024/25 meeting, manager Paul Heckingbottom had seen enough. He called his team out collectively and by name. He said he couldn’t wait to be rid of most of them. He said he wanted to throw a bomb under the whole thing (steady on, vicar) and would be meeting Peter Ridsdale (an apocalypse-bearing horseman if ever there was one) that night to start making plans.

We tipped them for relegation in this column last year on the basis of that, and a summer recruitment drive that didn’t appear very bomb-like to us. Naturally, when LoftforWords says you’re going down it immediately elevates performance levels by 30/40%. With the lifebelt we’d kindly tossed them safely attached, Knob End lost only one of their first nine games and then, after a couple of defeats to start October, entered the play-off picture with three consecutive victories against Sheff Utd, Southampton and Swansea. This lot were fourth in January. Fourth. Thank us later, lads.

Good starts, though, are part of the shtick here. They only lost four of 19 to start the previous year, unbeaten in eight including six consecutive wins to begin 23/24, two losses in 13 the year before, nine unbeaten through August and September in 21/22 and so on. What happens, and again this isn’t uncommon to us either, is the Christmas decorations come down and interest starts to wane. Flights to Mykonos are cheaper in March than May. QPR won six of their final 25 games last year, Preston matched that exactly. Between February 21 and March 11 Rangers lost four straight conceding 12 goals. Between February 28 and March 14 Preston lost four straight conceding ten goals. Look, just leave us alone, will ya? I’ve told you, I’ve got a girlfriend. She goes to another school.

Beaten at Blackburn with a goal in the 96th minute, Heckingbottom said he would be going nowhere near the Preston dressing room and players. Good time to mention the goal was scored in time added on because of the pathetic fake injury to the keeper thing this lot like to pull once a half? I’d have done it just for shits and giggles. Just for a laugh. Just… to feel, something. Anything.

They had, once again, done enough. Fourteenth to our fifteenth (stop it, I’ve told you). But how long can this carry on?

Ins >>> Alfie Devine, 21, AM, Spurs, £5m >>> Lee Nicholls, 33, GK, Huddersfield, Undisclosed >>> Jusef Erabi, 23, CF, Genk, Loan >>> Delano Burgzorg, 27, LW, Boro, Loan

Outs >>> Ben Whiteman, 30, CM, Wrexham, £3m >>> Jack Walton, 28, GK, Dundee Utd, Undisclosed >>> Noah Mawene, 21, DM, Fleetwood, Free >>> Michael Smith, 34, CF, Mansfield, Free >>> James Pradic, 21, GK, Fleetwood, Free >>> Jack Walton, 28, GK, Dundee Utd, Undisclosed >>> Jamal Lewis, 28, LB, Released >>> Will Keane, 33, CF, Released >>> Robbie Brady, 34, LM, Released >>> David Cornell, 35, GK, Released >>> Li-Bau Stowell, 18, GK, Chorley, Loan

This Season: That really is the big, and growing, question in these parts. They continue to surprise with really good looking bits of transfer business you wouldn’t have minded QPR doing ourselves (Alfie Devine this summer, Odel Offiah and Ali McCann, Thierry Small too – comedy own goals notwithstanding). They have good, steady Championship players who know the division well and have what it takes to cobble that magical 50 points together season after season. In goalkeeper Daniel Iversen they have somebody a good deal better than that – arguably the best of the non-loaned Championship goalkeepers.

They also play the loan market better than most. Villa’s Lewis Dobbin (now Southampton’s) and Everton’s Harrison Armstrong were exceptional last year, and the team was never the same once Armstrong went back to Merseyside without replacement. Once the 25-man squads are sorted upstairs expect some similar movement late in this window which will change the picture of what is currently a threadbare squad barely enough to make up a bench of senior players. That does feel a risky strategy, mind. Sticking plasters. Only need to end up with Tyler Roberts and Taylor Richards one year and look what can happen.

It just feels so uninspiring. I feel similarly with Swansea sometimes – get to May next year and you tell me a single Swansea or Preston win, or result of any sort really, you can remember over the previous nine months other than the two games against us. Turn up, 50 points on the board, cue on the rack by March. What is the point? What is the end game here? Ever gonna get round to finishing off that main stand? Nobody seems happy here. Heckingbottom frequently looks like he wants to kill half his team. Would you be surprised if he wasn’t still here by the time we meet in September? He’s had a face on this summer over the conduct of captain Ben Whiteman who has successfully forced through a move to Disney FC.

Whiteman a player I was a bit gutted we didn’t land when we wanted him from Doncaster but someone who has plateaued in recent years and was not popular among fans so it’s probably not a bad bit of business depending on the replacement, but the optics of your captain packing up and walking out a fortnight before the season aren’t great, are they? Nor cancelling the final pre-season friendly of the summer against a Barcelona B team because you couldn’t raise a side. The manager says his squad is “miles off it”, which should really help the mood in the dressing room, not to mention those season ticket sales. Roll up, roll up. They’ve signed a striker from Genk and a back up goalkeeper and that’s it. Is a loan for Delano Burgzorg really the move you make at a club where the manager frequently calls out standards and attitude at a place? He stank the place out on a similar deal to Bristol City last year, even less interested in a late 0-0 at Loftus Road than I was.

The ever loveable housewives’ choice Milutin Osmajic remains, though you have to factor in how many games he’s going to miss for elbowing people in the jaw, chewing on chunks of salty young full backs, racially abusing passing midfielders, or treating junctions 33-35 of the M6 past Lancaster as the fucking Nürburgring.

I think there are, again, several shitter teams than this lot (though as you’ll see Loftus IQ disagrees) but there are also a collection of Stoke, Watford, Blackburn types who have been in this league a while, are badly run, play mostly dreadful football, clock off every February, and are absolutely begging to be caught out doing it if we could just get through a year without others having points deductions or the League One promoted teams being dog shit. Preston are absolutely in that group.

Without the points deductions, 52 would not have kept you up last year. These guys could very easily go if there’s a repeat of that high water line.

Manager – Paul Heckingbottom This proposed change in the rules around goalkeepers feigning injury could be career ending.

Oppo View – Josh McLoughlin @Josh_McLoughlin “Last season was similar to many other seasons that we have seen before. A very promising start, 4th in January. Lost Harrison Armstrong back to Everton and didn't replace him. Daniel Iversen got injured and form massively tailed off. Looked at one stage we would get sucked into a relegation battle again but staved it off. On the whole the football was very poor to watch.

“At this moment in time, 100% I’m worried. We have no depth. Our main signing, Alfie Devine, was already here last season. Whilst it's great for the long-term future it's status quo. As mentioned we need another eight incomings before the end of the window, and once again we will be relying on picking up some last-minute quality loans from the Premier League. They were the difference for us last season, and they have been for many years. But one season they won't hit the ground running, and it will be time for the old guard to step up. Many have just been treading water at best for the last few years.”

Prediction: 21st (@LoftusIQ – 24th) The mood music is dreadful.

Blackburn 9/2

Last Season – 20th (we said 19th -1) Paul Heckingbottom’s angry end-of-term rants about chucking a bomb into the Deepdale dressing room (see it, say it, sorted) drew our eye to that corner of Lancashire for our relegation tip last summer, but the decay at Blackburn Rovers has been eating away at another fine old relic of English football for far longer.

Blackburn have had some really good managers come through here in the recent past - early years Moany Towbray, Jon Dahl Tomasson, John Eustace – who have been able to get tunes out of teams despite the three-ring chicken circus upstairs. Indeed, while QPR have toiled for more than a decade in this league never finishing higher than ninth, Rovers have been in that 7th-8th range which would be a play-off spot this season three times in the last five years.

They have had some excellent players, particularly up front, and brought in big transfer fees that should have enabled them to invest and build again. Ben Brereton-Diaz, Adam Armstrong and Sammy Szmodics have all breached the 20-goal mark in Rovers colours in the last five years in an era when 20-goal-a-season strikers don’t really exist. QPR haven’t had a forward score 20+ goals in a regulation league season since Andy Thomason in 2001/02, and that was in the division below.

Adam Wharton, Taylor Harwood-Bellis, Jarrad Branthwaite, Lewis Travis, Bradley Dack before he got fat, Callum Brittain, Dom Hyam, Sorba Thomas… there have been some really good players come through this place in one form or another. And Dion Sanderson.

All have left. All of them. Sold, released, fallen out with, sacked. The talent drain has been insane. Attempts to replace them weird and wonderful. The footballing operations are overseen by Rudy Gestede, a striker who once threatened to strike to leave the club and seems to hate it and its fans almost as much as they hate him. The Venky’s, and their various useful idiot front men (Suhail Pasha presently), are now at the banning the reporter from the local newspaper (Lancashire Telegraph’s Elliott Jackson on the naughty step) stage which is always a sign of a really well run, confident organisation. It was always difficult to understand what the perma-absent Indian chicken farmers got out of this ownership, now it’s outright strange. What is the point of all of this?

And so a season got underway in front of thousands of empty seats and protesting fans, in a stadium rapidly disappearing under water (Ipswich and Sheff Wed both had to come back and take another swing at their games here last season), with the widely disliked Valerian Ismael in the dugout directing the traffic in a widely disliked style of football. By the time QPR won here in November (one of only three away wins the R’s managed in their final 18 road trips) the place was like a morgue and Rovers were in the midst of a sequence at Ewood Park that would eventually stretch to two wins in 16 home games.

They survived, again, largely because of the appointment of another good manager. Michael O’Neill agreed to split his time between Lancashire and Northern Ireland for bit, swiftly posted the sort of 3-1 win Rovers seem to specialise in at Loftus Road, and got a disparate group of players and angry bunch of fans just about together for just about long enough to post five victories.

You need moments in a relegation scrap – Jimmy Dunne randomly pinging one in from 25 yards against Birmingham, for instance – and Rovers got two of them. At home against Preston they used the extra stoppage time created by PNE pulling that old trick with the fake injured goalkeeper to bag a winner in the 96th minute. At promotion chasing Millwall, with referee Gavin Ward seemingly running an experiment on how much he could piss the home fans off without being literally killed to death, they scored on 80 and 88 to snatch a wholly undeserved three points.

I’ve always wondered about Michael O’Neill. Very difficult to judge a manager on anything that goes on in bloody Stoke. This was a substantial tick in his column. I was sure they were doomed.

Despite O’Neill’s substantial, creditable, hugely impressive rescue act, Rovers survived in the end only courtesy of West Brom and Leicester being deducted points. Without that, they’d have gone regardless.

Ins >>> Moussa Baradji, 25, CM, Yverdon Sport, £1m >>> Jayden Fevrier, 23, RW, Stockport, £500k >>> Sam Morsy, 34, CM, Unattached, Free

Outs >>> Sondre Tronstad, 30, CM, Released >>> Ryan Hedges, 30, RW, Released >>> Nathan Redmond, 32, RW, Released

This Season: And so we resume Blackburn’s literal game of chicken. Just how badly can you run a football club and not have it end up in League One? Just about the only thing they have going for them at the moment is every time I give them a kicking in this preview and say they’re going to be shite they usually end up staging a surprise play-off push, so here goes…

Michael O’Neill was universally accepted as the best thing about them by the end of last season, the one thing they had going for them. So, naturally, he’s not here anymore. Amazing how many managers don’t fancy another ride here after having a good poke around under the bonnet isn’t it?

In his stead, the triumphant return of Moany Towbray, who rescued the club from League One during his last stint between 2017 and 2022. So Rovers do at least start this year without someone in the dugout the fans actively dislike. As much as we take the piss and play around with his name, Mowbray is clearly one of football’s really good and likeable guys, and so for his sake I’d absolutely love this to go well but… really? In advancing years and declining health, recent short term stints at Birmingham and West Brom have not gone well and Rovers were so unenamoured with him by the end of his first spell they simply let his contract run down to release (not that they ever got round to telling him that, of course). That he’s willing to go back in here smacks a little bit of desperation and lack of options on both sides.

The chronic talent drain from Ewood continues apace. I thought Sondre Tronstad was terrific when we played against him, exactly the sort of central midfielder our squad lacks. So, naturally, he’s not here anymore either.

There has been pitifully little business done here – a kid winger from Stockport, a central midfielder from the Swiss league, what’s left of Sam Morsy. Now, it is still early in the window, and I wrote a preview like this about Blackburn a couple of years ago only for them to go out and sign eight players the following week and almost touch the play-offs under John Eustace. They do like to get to work late in the summer window – probably to avoid paying their bloody wages during the summer. But I wouldn’t leave it too late because this is a squad that’s got an okay goalkeeper (Toth), a couple of decent Japanese lads (Morishita and Ohashi) and not a lot else presently. One can’t imagine Mowbray has gone back in here without some assurances. Right? Is this thing on? He’s already speaking in the press about appealing to the owners for recruitment help.

When we record the audio version of these previews for the podcast Steve from Loftus IQ often uses the term “stench of death” around clubs that have circled the drain in this division for a while and are only ever one batch of good newly promoted clubs or an injury crisis away from a long overdue dip into League One – Cardiff City’s class of 24/25, for example. Well, I’m afraid, this lot stink. Once you get to banning journalists that’s always the beginning of the end.

Manager – Moany Towbray Good luck, Art.

Oppo View – Ian Herbert “Last season was a complete slog.

“The club is a mess. Mowbray is on a hiding to nothing. He has my very best wishes, but my expectations are rock bottom.”

Prediction: 22nd (@LoftusIQ 19th) The water is rising around Blackburn Rovers, literally, and figuratively.

Portsmouth 5/1

Last Season – 18th (we said 16th -2) You’d be mistaken for thinking you’ve done the hard part by staying in the Championship for the first year after promotion. In fact, only one in five of the promoted League One teams go straight back down and for the last three years all three promoted teams have survived year one. Once the promotion momentum has waned and the novelty of playing Preston and Blackburn in the league instead of Wigan and Bolton has worn off, however, that tricky second album can be very tricky indeed. Rotherham, Plymouth, Burton and Blackpool among those who have got through year one only to succumb in year two in the recent past.

Portsmouth are perhaps fortunate not to have fallen foul of this trend in 25/26. The best things about them in year one - bar the Fratton Park fear factor which has seen Ipswich, Middlesbrough (twice), Coventry and Leeds all beaten here since they returned to the level – was striker Colby Bishop and winger Josh Murphy. Between them they scored 18 goals in 24/25 with plenty of assists for the latter thrown into the bargain. Given that scoring goals is often the hardest part for clubs on limited budgets in this league that felt like half the battle won and something tangible to build around. Then, through a mixture of injury (you think we’ve got problems) and general shitness, they got just three between them.

The scrabble around to replace even that which had led them to the princely heights of sixteenth was unedifying. Though they started with a win at Oxford, which was a big tick after their travel sickness the year before, it turned out every fucker won at Oxford last year. Only four more victories arrived between then and Christmas (Preston H, Boro H, Millwall H, Blackburn H). It would be nearly six months before another away win was logged, and even that only came at Sheff Wed where… it turned out every fucker won at Sheff Wed last year.

Former Disney boss Michael Eisner is the Simpsons version of Bill Gates – I didn’t get rich by writing a lot of cheques. It is difficult to really see what he’s here for, what he’s getting out of this, or why Portsmouth were so keen to fork their hard-won supporter ownership over to him. He rightly described the Championship as a “financial catastrophe” last year, and few would argue with him on that in a league where the average loss tops £18m a season. But… he is a billionaire. Nobody forced him to buy the club. Cry me a river, Michael. Or, better still, sign me a striker.

When your best attacking threat is (excellent) right back and surely once Minder extra Terry Devlin, might be worth throwing your miracle working manager a bone or two?
There were January additions. Ebou Adams perfect for this scenario, as he’d shown at Derby the year before. Two loans (Jacob Brown, Millenic Alli) arrived from League One midtablers Luton Town (fucking hell ambassador, chill out with the sweet treats for five minutes will ya). A decent festive haul of eight points from friendly fixtures with Blackburn, Derby, Charlton and our ever-charitable Christmas selves kept the lights on. They lost 5-0 at Bristol City but never mind that, keep paddling. Got your Sheff Wed win, that’s safe. West Brom beaten, as you would at that point. Then a couple of statement away pieces at Charlton and Millwall inside a week taking them from the division’s worst away record to… well, not the worst.

What we’re building up to here, obviously, is the return fixture at Loftus Road. A game QPR won 6-1 with six shots on target and four penalty box incursions. A very enjoyable statistical freakshow in which three separate QPR players scored a pair of goals each, and Paul Smyth played like some long-hidden offspring of Dave Thomas (not that one). There had been warning signs - this Pompey’s fifth defeat in six – and at the end the good people of the South Coast finally snaped and made their feelings plain. I haven’t seen an away end turn quite that dramatically nasty at Loftus Road since, well, since the last time Portsmouth turned dramatically nasty at Loftus Road actually. In the bottom three, it was enough to leave Adams, who’d toiled away in vain having weirdly been picked at what the kids call ‘ten’, in tears as he left the field. This, surely, a lost cause? Top three all still to play at this point.

This Portsmouth team, and manager, seem to do best when their backs are against the wall. Even the promotion they did achieve was done against the backdrop of an injury list akin to a small commuter plane crash. They would lose only one of their remaining eight games, winning four. Middlesbrough were beaten in Middlesbrough, and soon-to-be-promoted Ipswich lost a key game in hand at Fratton Park, inside three remarkable days. Their only defeat, a 5-1 loss at Coventry, actually came on the day their survival was confirmed regardless, helped along by a couple of handy points deductions elsewhere.

Landed on both wheels, pulled over at the side of the track, said ‘what you worried about?’.

Ins >>> Marko Milovanovic, 22, CD, Almeria, £3m >>> Rocco Shein, 22, CM, Fredrikstad (Norway), £2m >>> Daniel Bielica, 27, GK, Breda, £500k >>> Luke Brooke-Smith, 18, AM, Wellington, £400k >>> Eoin Kenny, 20, CF, Dundalk, £30k >>> Odin Bailey, 26, AM, Stockport, Free >>> Abu Kamara, 23, RW, Hull, Undisclosed

Outs >>> Andre Dozzell, 27, CM, DC United, Free >>> Reuben Swann, 20, CM, Braintree, Free >>> Makenzie Kirk, 22, CF, Barnsley, Loan >>> Toby Steward, 21, GK, St Johnstone, Loan >>> Jordan Archer, 33, GK, Released >>> Harry Clout, 19, AM, Released

This Season: With all that in mind, I wonder two things about Portsmouth this season.

The first is whether the Eisner family, hitherto tight as a mouse’s waistcoat, are finally going to blow the dust off the credit card enough to give John Mousinho the backing he so desperately needs here. To that end, striker Marko Milovanovic has arrived for three million of our British pounds. I’m not sure the locals have recovered from the shock enough to consider whether he’s any good or not, but at 6ft 6ins the Serbian fits well with the style of choice and has nine goals in the Portuguese league to go with 26 in his homeland to pop on his CV. Could be Mitrovic, could be Adam Czerkas. He’ll be supplied by Abu Kamara, who did not succeed at Hull but was considered a prospect at Norwich and has residual popularity here after a 2023/24 loan spell.

There will need to be reinforcements elsewhere, particularly if Wrexham firm up long-standing interest in influential right back Terry Devlin who scored against us on Boxing Day. I know we all considered Andre Dozzell a bit of a joke during his time in W12, but the Pompey faithful really grew to quite like him and lament his free move to DC United this summer. Still, a transfer to a league where there’s no tackling and no relegation feels pretty ideal for him.

The other is whether they can ever break out of this cycle of fight to survive. One of the many ridiculous things about that 6-1 is Portsmouth actually played quite well for long periods of it and held almost 60% of the possession. They were just suicidally vulnerable in transition when giving the ball away. A week later at Middlesbrough they went to a far tougher opponent and won 1-0 with their only shot on target in the last minute of a game in which they faced 20 shots and had 28% of the ball.

They remind me a lot of Ian Holloway’s two Championship teams at QPR. When those teams accepted their limitations, played to their strengths, and got about sides, they would win games in this league. Big Danny Shittu rampaging around, Matt Smith up front, get it wide to Cookie or Rowly, get it in the box, get Birch to wind them up… we’re a laundry Ol, we rinse and press. It was capable of producing some incredible results – the 3-2 comeback win against Leicester, the home victory over West Ham. QPR beat the Wolves of Raul Jiminez and Diogo Jota with goals from Conor Washington and Matt Smith. And then every time Ollie had one of his mad moments where he started talking about playing proper football and Roberto Martinez at Swansea and "when I had Gary Taylor Fletcher at Blackpool..." and so on, the whole thing went to shit and it would go on long losing runs.

Is dere more to Portsmouth, dan dis? Or should they just accept it and play up to it?

Manager – John Mousinho Best thing about them.

Oppo View @PompeyJonny

Prediction: 19th (@LoftusIQ 16th)

Watford 6/1

Last Season – 16th (we said 10th -6) Bring me an acoustic hotel lobby version of David Bowie’s Heroes and a scrolling montage of black and white photographs as we mourn this year’s sadly departed and dearly missed Watford managers.

Paulo Pezzolano 13 May 2025 - 8 Oct 2025
Javier Gracia 8 Oct, 2025 - 31 Jan, 2026
Charlie Daniels 2 Feb, 2026 - 10 Feb, 2026
Edward Still 10 Feb, 2026 14 Jun, 2026

The season started much like any other. Nice tranche of signings, not all but mostly via Udinese. Big bastard strikers all over the show. Ozzie wunderkind Nestory Irankunda from Bayern Munich – what are YOU doing here? Luca Kyerrumgaard on one of those deals that flip flops between a loan and a permanent as money passes from Gino Pozzo’s right hand to his left hand. Do the data folk have numbers for you? You’d better believe it. And, listen, anybody questioning the quality of the Danish league, or whatever it may be, is just non-player character energy, okay? These guys are great, and Watford are officially Vibes FC.

Off we trot with a manager everybody knows is not going to see the leaves fall from the trees and before too long at all it’s one win in six to begin with and that win is a home match against QPR (you R’s). Just as results start to turn for the positive “Paulo Pezzolano” is indeed sacked and replaced with whichever one of Javi Gracia or Quique Sánchez Flores is kicking around without much in his diary for the next few weeks.

Now at least winning the home games (Hull, West Brom, Norwich, Boro, Oxford all knocked over in reasonably short order) things settle down for a while. In fact, over Christmas, four wins on the trot are achieved. Oooooh. Stoke, Leicester, Norwich and Birmingham beaten, three clean sheets kept, and now the dotted line at the bottom of the play-off picture is honing into view. Sadly, so is the January transfer window. Gracia/Flores duly outlines what he thinks might be required to see this through into a genuine, full blown promotion push. Pozzo asks him whether he’d like the proposal rolled up nice and tightly to make it easier to stuff up his arse. The team immediately embarks on an eight game losing run starting with a punchy 5-1 loss at Bristol City in the FA Cup.

Gracia/Flores predictably resign on the eve of the transfer deadline and it’s therefore time once more to summon Hayden Mullins as caretaker manager. (Attention theatre lovers, the role of Hayden Mullins in tonight’s performance will be played by Charlie Daniels. *Applause*).

Will Still, by now binned off by Southampton when it turned out wanking yourself off into the branded microphone on the Jake Humphrey High Performance Podcast doth not immediately render you pleasurable to the ear of your standard meathead Championship footballer, felt very Watford to me at this point.

Unavailable, though, so here comes his non-union Belgian equivalent Ed Still for an entirely predictable limp to the finish line in which a team containing Imran Louza and Giorgi Chakvetadze contrived to win just three of its final 22 Championship fixtures. This included losing six of the last seven and all of the last five, conceding 19 goals in the process. (If you thought Ed Still was a bit of a random choice then in future a quick run through friends and acquaintances of French-Iranian agent Arnaud Mogi Baya is usually a good indicator to who Watford will be signing/appointing next).

The Hornets did six years in the Premier League between 2016 and 2022, but this is their life now and they’re starting to get sick of it.

Ins >>> Federico Ravaglia, 26, GK, Bologna, £5m >>> Martin Payero, 27, CM, Udinese, £3m >>> Luca Kjerrumgaard, 23, CF, Udinese, Undisclosed >>> Iker Bravo, 21, CF, Udinese, Undisclosed >>> Omar Traore, 28, RB, Guess, Undisclosed >>> Jordan Zemura, 26, LB, Oh look it’s Udinese again, Loan

Outs >>> Giorgi Chakvetadze, 26, AM, Udinese (shocked, shocked I tell you), Undisclosed >>> Nathan Baxter, 27, GK, Orient, Undisclosed >>> Tom Dele-Bashiru, 26, DM, Aris Saloniki, £500k >>> Tom Ince, 34, RW, Tranmere, Free >>> Vivaldo Semedo, 21, CF, Alverca, Loan >>> Jorge Hurtado, 22, CF, Deportes Tolima, Loan >>> Pierre Dwomoh, 22, CM, Released >>> Nampalys Mendy, 34, DM, Metz, Free >>> Myles Roberts, 24, GK, Released >>> Alfie Marriott, 22, GK, Chelmsford, Loan

This Season: It is very difficult not to get sucked in by Watford each summer. They have won promotion from this league in 2006, 2015 and 2021. They were in the FA Cup semi-final in 2016 and the final in 2019. The Pozzos are not short of cash. Udinese are not a bad club to be linked with. The talent that comes through here is, at times, extraordinary. How, you ask yourself, can a team with Louza (about as good as they come at this level) and Chakvetadze supplying Baah, Kjerrumgaard and Irankunda not do some serious damage in a league where Daniel Jebbison is considered an attractive loan option? Doesn’t matter who the manager is, does it? Never did before when they did five years in the Premier League. Fuck it, maybe they are Vibes FC. Stick em tenth. Kool Aid everywhere.

And then the whole cycle begins again and you just boot yourself over and over for ever believing it would possibly be anything else. With that in mind we welcome Alessio Dionisi to the stage for the first little while. Twice promoted from Serie B with Sassuolo and Empoli to be fiar to him but if he makes it as far as Bully’s Prize Board I’ll give him the radio alarm clock myself.

The firepower up front remains – Kjerrumgaard, Baah, Irankunda etc. Louza is here for now, Chakvetadze is not (guess where he went) and you’d think that’s probably enough, right? Look at some of the other teams on this page. But with Irankunda linked with Sporting and Louza also wanting away you’d be a brave man to back the Hornets for much more than a struggle. Definite subject of lifeguard interest if those two go.

More problematic, this is increasingly a team far less than the sum of its parts. Football clubs have to stand for something, have to have some form of identity, have to have some reason for being, otherwise what’s the point? Who cares if they finish eighth or 18th? Certainly not the players, who know the whole goal here is basically moving money around and furnishing another team elsewhere in Europe. Why would you put your leg in the way of being broken for midtable Watford in the final three months of a season, sitting in the middle of the Championship, listening to manager number four warble on, and that manager is Ed fucking Still? You wouldn’t, and they don’t. Have you seen a more disinterested side than the one which came to Loftus Road in April. Any hint he might have changed this time, mum, immediately blown out of the water by their summer business – six signings made, five from Udinese. What, exactly, is Scott Duxbury doing here as chairman and CEO? He seems to have as much power as those two twats who sit next to Alan Sugar.

If anything this is starting to feel like it might get worse, rather than better. Pozzo’s interest seems to be waning and his heart is elsewhere. Cracks are starting to appear even in the grim, pragmatic, financial reality of “this is what we have to do to survive”. Watford’s academy has been downgraded from category two to three, and its U21 side closed altogether. This is to create a “smoother pathway to the first team”, apparently. Sure.

Couple of years ago it would be unthinkable to write about Watford in this section. That the bookies have them as short as 6/1 to go down says an awful lot. People are starting to get nervous about this lot.

August/September Manager – Alessio Dionisi Another tremendous round of Watford manager or coffee machine?

Oppo View – Richard Segal “Last season was as bad as it has been under the Pozzo ownership. They took a gamble on an inexperienced manager in Paulo Pezzolano and decided in October that was not working, they then flicked through the big black book of contacts and went back to one of four managers that lasted a season under their hiring and firing scattergun approach.

“I am going to stay positive and go for 15th place. The mood will be tested if the forementioned opening salvo of games do not go our way.”

@CameronSmart_ “Last season had been out of mind until you put this question to me. It was a real frustrating one; the signs were there all along that we had what it takes to do something, especially with (dare I say) the most talented squad we’ve had at this level. It was handed to a bloke who I never bothered to learn the name of because it was obvious he wouldn’t last - his bed was made with a damning video published by the club of his uninspiring attempt to communicate with the players in the dressing room. It was like a morgue in there, and fans wanted him gone from the off. Then came an old favourite, Javi Gracia, to totally tarnish his own reputation. Weeks into getting the job he expressed his wish to return home and retire, and he never made any effort to move away from his 4-4-2 system that worked quite nicely seven years ago. His reliance on current Tranmere Rovers player Tom Ince was staggering, especially in favour of all the talent he had, and he totally wasted his opportunity with us. Maybe it’s less his fault and more the people who had to talk him out of retiring to bring him in. To complete the hat-trick we brought in the brother of a well-liked manager, Ed Still, who may have had some good ideas and garnered a few bright performances but ultimately his only pedigree was being sacked by half of Belgium so it was only natural he’d add Watford to that list. So, in short, last season was a waste of everyone’s time and another self sabotage.

“So, on that note, I do think a mid table finish is on the cards. There’s still a lot of work to do in the last month of the window and if we drop the ball it could be a tough season. We start with some tough fixtures against teams you’d think will be up there in May, and you know what a bad start for a Watford manager means. The only thing that will make me feel any kind of thrill about Watford this season is if Dionisi is still in the dugout in a year. That’s the only feasible good outcome from this season. We have the firepower to sneak into the playoffs, but it means nothing if we’re not gonna finally change our approach, or change our owners. With that said I think mid table is on the cards. Does mid table get you in the playoffs these days? As a side prediction I think Edoardo Bove will be one to watch this season, having had a full preseason post-cardiac arrest. The guy has the pedigree to be a machine so watch this space.”

Prediction: 17th (@LoftusIQ 20th) I would not want to be starting with Southampton H, Wrexham A and West Ham H if I was in Watford’s present state.

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