In a Championship where a dozen teams could easily find themselves in relegation trouble, there’s quite a logjam at the bottom as we conclude our season preview with a vague stab at who we think could be heading to League One.
Last Season: When QPR were first relegated from the Premier League, back in 1996, their ‘we’re not in Kansas anymore Toto’ came in the form of an opening day fixture at home to Oxford United – our alleged conquerors in some cup final or other that may or may not have taken place ten years prior. Nigel Jemson briefly gave the U’s the lead as well, just to make it really clear this wasn’t going to be as easy for the R’s as many anticipated. Ray Wilkins’ side did rally to win 2-1, but would take 15 years to get back to the top flight.
It's taken Oxford a good deal longer than that to make it back to this level. Nobody who was at the nine-sided Manor Ground, seemingly put together through many years enthusiastic attendance at local car boot sales, for the 4-1 capitulation that brought the curtain down on Ray Harford’s disastrous spell at QPR would argue that ground was fit for purpose. But the Kassam Stadium, conveniently situated in downtown Buttfuck Nowhere, with three stands set miles back from the pitch and a ‘bowling alley end’, is the worst kind of new stadium development and has proven something of a millstone around Oxford’s neck. They were relegated from the First Division in 1999, the Second Division in 2001, and the renamed League Two in 2006. Four seasons in the Conference followed.
The rebuild from there has been slow and steady. There have been some decent managers through here – Chris Wilder, Michael Appleton and Karl Robinson all had successful spells of several years. They climbed out of non-league in 2010 under the former, League Two in 2016 under Appleton, and Robinson had them in the League One play-offs in 2020 and 2021. Oxford has become a mark of quality for progressive football, and footballers. Clubs higher up the ladder have regularly come calling here for development signings like Luke McNally (Burnley, £1.5m), Rob Atkinson (Bristol City, £1.5m), Rob Dickie (QPR, £2.5m), Shandon Baptiste (Brentford, £2m), Gavin Whyte (Cardiff, £2m).
This finally looked like culminating in a promotion back to the Championship after 25 years away when the trendy’s trendy Liam Manning had the U’s second, three points off leaders Portsmouth, 15 games into last season. Unfortunately, he took the bait at Bristol City. Things, understandably, started to go a little awry. Pompey accelerated away, Derby jumped into second, Bolton and Peterborough usurped them, as Oxford won only four of the next 15 games over the winter and lost 5-0 at Bolton live on the tellybox.
To replace Manning they went for Des Buckingham, a 39-year-old coach from the Death Star City Football Group who’d previously been with their outfits in Melbourne and Mumbai but, more to the point, was an Oxford fan, from Oxford, who’d previously played and coached in Oxford’s youth set up.
There were teething troubles. But Oxford became that most lethal of footballing things – the team gatecrashing the play-offs in hot form. They won six and lost only two of the final ten to make the knockouts ahead of a similarly red-hot Lincoln, who’d have been a threat had they got there and are worth a watch this season. They then changed to a far more cautious, defensive approach, catching Peterborough cold in the semi-final before outplaying, outthinking and outscoring a woeful Bolton performance at Wembley.
Certainly a feather in Buckingham’s coaching cap, and Oxford come roaring back into this division in fine style for the first time in a quarter of a century.
Ins >>> Peter Kioso, 24, RB, Rotherham, £750k >>> Jack Currie, 22, LB, Wimbledon, £450k >>> Idris El Mizouni, 23, CM, Ipswich, £400k >>> Louie Sibley, 22, CM, Derby, Free >>> Przemyslaw Placheta, 26, LW, Swansea, Free >>> Jamie Cumming, 24, GK, Chelsea, Free >>> Will Vaulks, 30, CM, Sheff Wed, Free >>> Matt Phillips, 33, RW, West Brom, Free >>> Jacob Knightbridge, 20, GK, West Ham, Free >>> Matt Ingram, 30, GK, Hull, Undisclosed >>> Malcolm Ebiowei, 20, RW, Palace, Loan
Outs >>> Josh Murphy, 29, LW, Pompey, Free >>> Billy Bodin, 32, AM, Burton, Free >>> James Henry, 35, RW, Aldershot, Free >>> Oisin Smith, 24, AM, St Mirren, Undisclosed >>> Stephan Negru, 21, CB, Salford, Loan >>> Jacob Knightbridge, 20, GK, Braintree, Loan >>> Steve Seddon, 26, LB, Released >>> Marcus Browne, 26, LB, Released
This Season: So a steady, sustainable, slow burn and build back up the leagues under considered, progressive management. There’s a new stadium in the works here, next to a train station would you believe (it’ll never catch on). They’ve also been busy in recruitment, led by head of football ops Ed Waldron, too. It’s been like Katie Price’s house on Father’s Day down the Kassam this transfer window – 11 different blokes through the door so far and still time for more. The most business done of any club in the division. Several other season previews (Not The Top 20 for one) have drunk the Kool-Aid and placed them well outside the bottom three. So why are we so dead set on them going straight back, and tipping them bottom?
Reason one – we’re lazy. It’s a difficult job writing these previews, Oxford are the bookies’ favourites to go down, they’re a newly promoted team, sometimes if it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck it’s a duck. Norwich at home and Coventry away is quite the start, but Blackburn, Preston and Stoke lie just beyond. I get the feeling we’ll know pretty quickly how this is going to go.
Secondly, follow the money. There aren’t any hard and fast predictors of football team performance, but overall wage bill is about the best indicator you can have over time. There are occasional outliers – QPR are always terrible when they spend loads on wages, Birmingham got relegated last year just as they started to splash the cash – but in general you can plot a line right across the scatter graph of the Championship that pretty closely mirrors wage bills. If Oxford, last season averaging 9,000 fans in a 12,500 capacity stadium they don’t own, aren’t the lowest payers in the division this year they’ll certainly be one of the three lowest.
Thirdly, while they have indeed been busy in the transfer window, and I’m starting to hear and read bits about how clever they’ve been with the recruitment, I’m not as convinced. They’ve signed a lot of Peter Kioso, Louie Sibley and Jack Currie types who are popular among podcasters – are they as good as the hype? Maybe, we’ll find out. They’ve added Championship experience – but are we really saying Sheff Wed sub Will Vaulks is going to move the needle? Or 33-year-old Matt Phillips, who didn’t punch his weight when he was 23? People have told me Przemyslaw Placheta (vowel please, Carol) is a smart pick up – hasn’t he been mostly terrible for Norwich and Swansea? Malcolm Ebiowei is an exciting capture from Palace based on his performance for Derby at Loftus Road a couple of seasons back alone – but he’s only started six games of football in two years since. Matt Ingram is not a Championship goalkeeper, as we know to our cost.
Fourthly, goals. We went all in on Plymouth surviving in similar circumstances a year ago because we were confident Whittaker et al would score goals. Mark Harris top scored here with 15 last year. Do they have the requisite firepower? I don’t believe so. They finally wrestled Josh Murphy into form for the second half of last season after years of injury problems and underachievement – and he’s buggered off to Portsmouth.
Fifthly, their play out from the back in pre-season games has been hair-raising stuff. Are they going to be brave enough to do that in this division, particularly away? How will that go? It was enough to beat Southampton 2-0 in one warm up game to be fair.
And, finally, all three promoted teams look weaker to me than Ipswich, Sheff Wed and Plymouth who came up a year ago all with 90+ points. Ipswich were promoted again, Sheff Wed and Plymouth both survived. I can see a world this year in which Derby, Portsmouth and Oxford all go straight back.
There are plenty of positives too. I’ve long admired Cameron Brannagan, scorer of 12 goals from midfield last season (imagine), and the idea of him being the main man in a Championship side is exciting. Likewise, star boy Tyler Goodrham and the superbly talented Ruben Rodrigues, who I think we missed out on big time when he left Notts County, ahead of him.
A theme of this bit of the preview will be that it’s also a really good year to be shit in the Championship. We picked our top five for this preview really easily, because they’re the only five decent sides. It’s taken us weeks of agonising over the bottom half of the table and we’re only publishing now because we’re out of time. Frankly, I fancy 12 teams to get relegated this year. If you tell me Stoke (who we’ve placed 15th), Swansea (14th), even Sunderland (11th) and Hull (7th!!) go down this year, I could well believe you. The newly promoted teams need to find three worse sides than them and there are a lot of Blackburn, Watford, Millwall, Preston and Cardiff types, who’ve been booting round the bottom end of this league for a while, have substandard squads, have recruited poorly, and could easily go this year.
For now, though… yeh. Sorry.
Manager – Des Buckingham Named like a steakhouse, handles like a bistro.
Opposition View – Adam England "The highs and the lows, the tos and the fros of life in League One. A rollercoaster of a season that was transformed in 66 days, from an embarrassing 5-0 defeat to Bolton Wanderers, live on Sky, on March 12, where the players looked down and out of any lingering promotion hopes, to an epic play-off final win against the same opposition at Wembley in May. Last year will always be remembered by Oxford fans for that one, magical day and it makes reviewing the season very straightforward and uninteresting indeed(!)... Game of the season... Wembley... Goal of the season... Josh Murphy at Wembley (pick one)... Performance of the season... Wembley... etc.. I promise (for now, at least) to stop mentioning Wembley(!).
"That day... under the famous arch... disguises that the season up until that point was a tough-to-watch football drama in three acts. Last August seems like a very long time ago. Oxford went from a promising start, playing stylish football with a strong identity under an exciting manager, to a darker second act of the season, unexpectedly losing that manager in November and sliding down the league table. Oxford looked to have squandered that promising start and serious doubts amongst fans about the new manager, Des Buckingham, grew, as it looked from the outside that he struggled to establish himself and assert how he wanted to play football on the team.
"Buckingham of course was vindicated in a glorious final act of the season, turning things around from the Bolton 5-0 nadir and securing Championship promotion. In retrospect, his strategy was super-simple; set up the team to get the most form the most-talented player in his squad - the now departed (to Portsmouth) Josh Murphy. When in possession, get the ball to Murphy. When out of possession, keep it tight, win the ball back, and get it to Murphy. With this gameplan, Oxford wrestled together enough points in the final eight games to limbo into the play-off placed on the final day of the season, and then go through the gears- when it mattered most-to execute an unexpected tactical masterplan over two legs against Peterborough and Bolton in the final. Did I mention that Oxford played (and won!) at Wembley?... I hope that came across.
"Writing this I wonder if any other fans have a more complex relationship with their manager than Oxford has with Des Buckingham? We love him because he’s a local Oxford boy with history at the club who won the U’s promotion, yet save for the last few games last year where he and the team shone, Des at times looked out of his depth as fans loudly questioned if he was the right man for the job. Were those final half a dozen games of the season and three play-off fixtures a sign that the team has permanently turned the corner and will hold their own at Championship level? Or just a team and manager lucking into a bit of form at the right time?
"After getting their fingers burnt with Manning’s premature departure, Oxford’s owners invested heavily in the Buckingham project, paying the City group a hefty fee to release him from his services at Mumbai City and signing him to a long-term contract. It felt earlier in the year that it may have been this investment alone that saved him from the chop. However, Buckingham deserves great credit, it cannot be easy taking over a winning side and persuading players, when you have no record of success in English football yourself, that Liam Manning’s way of playing was a thing of the past and moving on to a new way of winning was possible. It also took time to replace the coaching staff that Bristol poached along with Manning. Once these two issues were fixed, Buckingham and Oxford looked transformed and sparked-off the run of form that got us promoted.
"When Des joined the club in November, He played down his local connections. Yes, he and his family were/are Oxford fans, but it was a career move, not an emotional one. After the final whistle in May, this narrative softened somewhat. Oxford City Council released footage on their Twitter feed showing Des leading rowdy crowds gathered outside Oxford town hall for promotion celebrations in bawdy songs about Swindon from an open-top bus. It shouldn't do, but winning means more with a man in charge that knows what being a football fan growing up in Oxford is like and what it would mean to the people of the city if the club owners’ vision for the future for Oxford United to grow and compete at Championship level long-term is achieved.
"I can’t help feeling that the first ten games of the season are huge and I think they could define Buckingham’s time here and potentially make (or break) his managerial career. If Oxford get off to a strong start, Des will be on the radar of every top 30 club in England and possibly further afield too, he was recently linked to the Welsh national manager’s job - presumably for his recent track record in getting the most out of league one standard players(!) - before Craig Bellamy took the job on. Get it wrong and it could be back to the dark-days of February this year of looking like a one-hit wonder that isn’t going to cut the mustard in English football.
"I obviously hope (beyond hope) that it is the former scenario that transpires. The Buckingham project is a long-term one at Oxford, investing in a young manager for the years to come, not simply for a result in the next match. I have a lot of confidence in the direction of the club and I believe when we hit the inevitable challenging time this season, the club will hold their nerve- like they did back in February/ March and trust Buckingham to get the job done.
"It is too soon to tell how Oxford will play in the Championship. Des is a pragmatist more than dogmatically fixed to a style of playing. He will ditch what doesn’t work and adopt what does. Winning enough points to stay in the league is all that matters this season, how we achieve that is irrelevant, any attractive football we can muster will be a bonus.
"What we saw last season in the play-offs is that given time to prepare the team, when there was a 10-day gap between the semi-final second leg and the final, Buckingham and his coaching staff can expertly tailor a side to adapt, nullify and exploit weakness in the opposition. Being able to replicate this to the same (or higher) standard, week-in, week-out in a shorter timeframe in the Championship, will be key to the success Oxford United have this season.”
Prediction: 24th Lazy pick, should probably be showing more gratitude to them for preventing us having to go to that bastard Harvester next to Bolton’s ground for another season but I’m still bitter about 86.
Last Season: While there wasn’t a lot of love around for Plymouth in last summer’s season previews, we always confidently predicted Argyle would stay with some to spare for a simple reason – they would score goals.
Score goals they did. Only Sammie Szmodics and Adam Armstrong bagged more than Morgan Whittaker’s 19 in the league, making him a strong contender for Championship signing of the season at £1m and heaping further ridicule on Swansea’s shambolic retainment and recruitment operation – they spent nearly double that replacing him with Jerry Yates.
Chuck in a dozen from Ryan Hardie, who’s travelled all the way up from League Two in green, and you had a potent enough force to compete at the level. Huddersfield, Stoke, Sheff Wed, Norwich, Sunderland, Blackburn and Rotherham were all beaten at Home Park up to Christmas, and Norwich conceded six in the process. From ninth place down, only Watford and Blackburn scored more than Plymouth’s 59. They were one of the better teams to come to Loftus Road, getting a 0-0 draw despite playing an hour with ten men.
And survive they did. That despite only winning twice away from home, the first road win not until February, and losing the hugely influential Stephen Schumacher as manager at Christmas to a very-Stoke-indeed five times his salary elsewhere.
The second half of the season without him was a slog. Returning to Scouseland for another promising young coach in Ian Foster backfired – attacking is Plymouth’s strength, they were never going to be able to play the more cautious and deep-lying football he wanted. It felt like Argyle were desperately trying to drag it through to the summer to sort out but when everybody else at the bottom started winning (not you, Huddersfield) it dragged them too close for comfort and Foster was sacked after three wins in 16 games. The Greens diplomatically said the Ian Foster they got in the dugout was not the Ian Foster they’d interviewed.
From the Monty Python School of Ridiculous names, Kevin ‘Evil’ Nancekivell and Neil Dewsnip took caretaker charge. They got the away win at Rotherham and fantastic 1-0 home success over champions Leicester they needed to flop over the line fourth bottom.
Ins >>> Kornel Szucs, 22, CB, Kecskemet (Hungary), £250k >>> Victor Palsson, 33, CB, KAS Eupen (Belgium), Free >>> Nathanael Ogbeta, 23, LB, Swansea, Free >>> Darko Gyabi, 20, CM, Leeds, Loan >>> Ibrahim Cissoko, 21, LW, Toulouse, Loan >>> Muhamed Tijani, 23, CF, Slavia Prague, Loan
Outs >>> Mickel Miller 28, LW, Huddersfield, Free >>> Callum Burton, 27, GK, Wrexham, Free >>> Dan Scarr, 29, CB, Wrexham, Undisclosed >>> Tyreik Wright, 22, RW, Bradford, Undisclosed >>> Zak Baker, 19, GK, Plymouth Parkway, Loan >>> Jack Endacott, 19, LB, Released >>> Oscar Halls, 19, CB, Released
This Season: And then you go and spoil it all by doing something stupid like Wayne Rooney.
Having spent all last summer saying Plymouth would be fine because of the goals in the team, and then most of this year’s previews decrying the weakest Championship in years, it may seem contrary to say this lot are in trouble – after all, Whittaker and Hardie are still here at the time of writing. As Shaun Williamson sang, we’re gonna do it anyway, because after one botched managerial appointment Argyle have now staked their reputation as one of the country’s best run clubs on the appointment of Wayne Rooney as their new manager.
The more you hear and see of England’s "golden generation” in retirement the more you realise there was probably a bit more to their unmitigated failure as a team than Sven’s various dalliances. Gary Neville, sacked after 28 games at Valencia; Rio Ferdinand, wanders round Wilmslow shouting ‘Balon D’or’ at parked cars; John Terry, served a ban for racially abusing our centre half; Ashley Cole, coached Birmingham to relegation from the Championship; David Beckham, makes puff pieces about his own life for Netflix so we don’t have to mention that bit where he knobbed the au pair; Frank Lampard, gets Uncle ‘Arry to talk him into jobs then makes a bollocks of them; Stevie G, sixth in the Saudi and District Sunday League; Paul Scholes, chews his own daughter’s toenails; Michael Owen, follows Howard Webb around telling him how wonderful he is; and Wazza, a 4:3 head trapped in a 16:9 world.
It says something about how Rooney’s managerial career has gone so far that he’s ended up here – although perhaps there’s just been a misunderstanding over what exactly a Plymouth Hoe is?
He got a ridiculous amount of praise for his management of Derby, where Liam Rosenior did the heavy lifting as his assistant and they were relegated anyway having, at one point, won one of 22 away games. He pitched up at a Birmingham side sitting sixth and set them off into a doom spiral towards League One from which they never escaped. It’s difficult to imagine him spending more than a couple of days a week in Devon. It’ll be Thursday training, Friday set pieces, and a private chopper out of there at 17.01 each Saturday. He’s already said Colleen and the sprogs won’t be making the move (shock) and that he’ll be "quite happy to hand over training and team meetings to coaches and backroom staff” (shocker still).
There are other issues here than just the spud in the dugout. Plymouth’s budget will always be one of the lowest in this league, and there are few better indicators of performance than wage bill (not you Birmingham). Stephen Schumacher seemed completely at one with this group of players and club, and they simply haven’t been the same without him – his one of those moves that works for neither club involved, nor the person themselves, so far. Goalkeeper Michael Cooper, certainly in the top three stoppers at this level if not the top one, has turned down a contract that would have made him the highest paid player in Argyle history and is now talking to Sheff Utd. There’s no guarantee Whittaker will still be here by the end of the window either.
And one of Foster’s big problems were the lightweight nature of his January loan signings. The first half of the season, and indeed their promotion, had been built around four or five really successful loans and this team has never been anywhere close to where it was before since Finn Azaz was taken out of it, and Luke Cundle to a lesser extent. The summer business so far – Darko Gyabi a kid midfielder from Leeds, Victor Palsson a 33 year old centre back from the Jupiler League – don’t look anywhere close to that level.
I hope I’m wrong. Giant Mohamed Tijani up front might be fun. Cissoko from Toulouse is meant to be useful. It’s always exciting when Plymouth go shopping in Hungary (toilet graffiti Kornel Szucs cost £400k from Kecskeméti). I’m always happier when QPR and Plymouth are sharing a league. I have such fond memories of our fixtures together down the years. I love spending time down there when we play.
Nevertheless, I’m making a Marge Simpson grumbly noise as long as a Leonard Cohen song at this set up.
Manager: Wazza Rooney "Pee comes out of the balls.”
Opposition View: Ben @ Argyle Life and the Green and White Podcast "Last season was an absolute rollercoaster. There were some basket cases in the league early on (as you’ll well know), so staying up under the talented Steven Schumacher seemed a more-than-realistic target, despite having the smallest budget in the Championship - or second-smallest depending who you ask. Losing Schumacher to Stoke on the cusp of New Year was painful and damaging - as was losing Finn Azaz to Middlesbrough. Then Azaz’s likely replacement Luke Cundle following Schumacher to Stoke really left a creative hole which we tried but ultimately failed to fill.
"The appointment of Ian Foster and the January recruitment all seemed reasonable, but achieved varying degrees of success. The club refused to sack the floundering Foster for a while, amid fan dissent and reports of dressing-room discontent, but thankfully pulled the trigger with enough time for DoF Neil Dewsnip and coach Kevin Nancekivell to save the season.
"Frankly, most of us would have all taken staying up by one point on the last day at the start of the season, but it was a lot closer than it needed to be.
"Wayne Rooney. Boy. Well… I can’t hate the man for applying for the job, but I am baffled by the appointment. The chairman released a statement on the appointment styled as an interview, and a great number accepted the defences of the appointment he put forward. Not me though. There’s either some massive flaws of logic - or some untruths - in it. Ultimately, we can only give him a fair crack, and I think the vast majority have agreed to that. Like Foster, he’ll have our support until it really is untenable.
"A lot of the squad was under contract, and those that left we seem to have replaced with at least marginal improvements. We could definitely do with at least one RCB, and maybe a RB. Someone who could do both would be splendid. CM could do with some spice too. Can’t complain about the loans of the enormous Mohamed Tijani from Slavia Praha to compete with/ complement Ryan Hardie upfront, and wide-man Ibrahim Cissoko from Toulouse. He especially - if he can produce end product to match the flicks and chops - could make a similar impact on the Championship as Morgan Whittaker did last season.
"It looks like Whittaker will be sticking around, but there’s a curiosity in the situation. He enjoys life down here and being at the club. He also enjoys - I feel - being the big fish in a small pond, and is quite content playing and being adored. I’m not sure he’d like to go somewhere bigger and risk that unless he’s convinced. However, he’s not signed an improved deal - which I’d have been banging the table for if I was him/ his agent. Maybe he will if nothing has been agreed with another club by the end of the window? But it makes me think he and the club have agreed to keep their options open for at least this window.
"Honestly, I’ll gladly take staying up on the last day again. The clubs they’ve come up all look better than those that went down and everyone left has got their houses in order. I don’t blame everyone putting us 23rd or 24th in their predictions. If I wasn’t partisan I’d do the same. As I am, I feel obliged to say 21st again.”
Prediction: 23rd If Cooper and Whittaker hang around, then maybe. Otherwise, their best hope is it’s a really good year to be crap.
Last Season: There are teams we overtip every year (Millwall, Bristol City, Middlesbrough) and teams we consistently underrate. Blackburn, in recent times, have certainly been one of the latter. Tipped for seasons of struggle in 21/22 and again in 22/23, they pushed hard for the play-offs until deep into April. Chuck in an unlucky defeat in an FA Cup quarter final and we’ve been made to look very silly indeed on more than one occasion by Rovers – just to add to the all-round fun of the annual slog up to Ewood Park, a ground QPR hadn't won on for 23 years.
The logic, though, has been sound. One of the key things we look for in these season previews is a) who’s the owner and b) are they being a bellend? At Blackburn it’s Captain Bellend (later renamed The Venky’s) - a bellend as big as St Paul’s Cathedral, all purple and swollen and blocking out the sun. It’s a boss level bellend – you knock over the Venky’s and it’s only Derek Chansiri to go. It’s an owner that was primarily responsible for taking a settled Premier League club (former champions, no less) and turning it into a Championship side in the first place – Steve Kean’s barmy army. An ownership that did the parachute payments, didn’t get promoted, and then ended up in League One. They’re going back there if they don’t get their act together, if not now then soon.
With that has come a significant talent drain from this team over time. Adam Wharton, Adam Armstrong and Thomas Kaminski have all departed. At least they went for decent money, though. Contracts have been mismanaged, offers turned down for players at the peak of their selling potential, and then lost for buttons later on – Joe Rothwell and Darragh Lenihan went for free, Ben Brereton-Diaz likewise when there had been bids of £10m+ 18 months prior, David Raya fetched just £3m. Investment back into the team, meanwhile, has been minimal. Rovers took £40m in fees between 2021 and 2024 and spent £5m. You can’t keep doing that and it not take effect on the standard of the team.
By the time 23/24 started, it seemed manager Jon Dahl Tomasson had quickly become fed up. I’d say there was an uneasy truce, but it wasn’t uneasy and it wasn’t a truce. Tomasson would use local media to state the project he’d initially been brought in from Malmo to oversee was now completely different – reading between the lines he’d come to fight for a Premier League return and was now tasked with avoiding a league derby with Accrington. He became increasingly, publicly aggy as Rovers’ reasonable start (and obligatory big win at Loftus Road) started to tail off over the winter into a first QPR win at Ewood Park since the time of the dinosaurs. Relationships became strained with his players too – Lewis Travis, very good midfielder in this division, was loaned out to Ipswich in January when Rovers could seemingly ill-afford to let him go.
A parting of the ways was inevitable, and John Eustace was summoned. Now, here’s a man who’s spent significant time at QPR and Birmingham City and is therefore clearly very adept at functioning in his duties while staring wide-eyed and face-first into the teeth of a category five piss hurricane. And even he struggled to get a tune out of what he inherited here.
Tomasson had previously taken a mediocre Rovers side to the cusp of the play-offs by eschewing the convention of drawn games entirely. Rovers either won, or they lost, in 22/23, and it turns out that works tremendously well in the three points for a win era. They were able to finish seventh while losing 17 times – Rotherham finished nineteenth losing 18. Somebody’s been reading Flavio Briatore’s Big Book of Football – difference between draw and lose is one point, who cares? John Eustace has not been reading Flavio Briatore’s Big Book of Football – Blackburn drew seven of his first eight games in charge.
There began a concerning drift downwards. Eustace went so long without a win at home (its August now and he’s still yet to taste victory at Ewood Park having arrived in February) that the club started sneakily claiming he’d actually been pulling the strings behind the scenes for a 3-1 win against Stoke under caretaker management. This drift continued into April when they were beaten 5-0 at Bristol City and things started to go a bit J G Ballard.
They then won 1-0 at Leeds and 2-0 at Leicester, landed on both wheels, pulled over at the side of the track and said ‘what you worried about?’
Ins >>> Makhtar Gueye, 26, CF, RWDM (Belgium), £1.5m >>> Yuki Ohashi, 28, CF, Hiroshima (Japan), £1m >>> Aodhan Doherty, 18, LW, Linfield, £100k >>> Andreas Weimann, 32, AM, Bristol City, Free >>> Danny Batth, 33, CB, Norwich, Free >>> Jack Barrett, 22, GK, Everton, Free
Outs >>> Sam Gallagher, 28, CF, Stoke, £1.5m >>> Leo Wahlstedt, 24, GK, Aarhus (Denmark), £1m >>> Semir Telalovic, 24, CF, SSV Ulm, Undisclosed >>> Jake Garrett, 21, DM, Bristol Rovers, Loan
This Season: There is, nevertheless, plenty to worry about here. Rovers spent a good chunk of the final game of the season standing on the precipice – one goal in Birmingham’s match and Rovers would have been down and out. This despite Sammie Szmodics scoring 27 goals in the league and 33 in all comps. Without him they’d have been toast, and without him they may well about to be.
The Venky’s malignant ownership continues to eat away at the soul of this place. They’re currently locked in a year-long court case back India essentially over procedures they’ve used to send money into UK investments. Whether this means they can no longer fund the club until the case is sorted, can fund the club but only by putting up effectively 1:1 equal money as ‘bail’, or can fund the club and are just using this as an excuse, is open for some conjecture. In the meantime though Blackburn are being charged with keeping their own lights on. They’ve received £20m for Wharton, David Raya’s move to Arsenal will pump in some valuable sell-on clause money, and somebody may be about to drop eight figures on this year’s Mike Sheron, Sammie Szmodics. There’s the thick end of £40m there potentially and, yet… the team remains woefully under nourished.
Short of them being closet Burnley fans, secretly enjoying burying their bitter rivals for good, it’s really difficult to see what the Venky’s get out of this venture. If they’re trying to build the brand of their chicken slaughtering business for some sort of European push it’s hardly working is it? Anybody over here who does know who they are thinks they’re a bunch of fucking idiots. Director of football Gregg Broughton is the headline name in a steady string of football staff leaving the business, which is now being run day to day by the increasingly detested CEO Steve Waggott. Twice in successive January windows (Lewis O’Brien 2023, Duncan Maguire 2024) transfer deals have been declared, player paraded with scarf, official website articles published, only for the paperwork to have been botched and the player left in angry, frustrated limbo for the next six months. Once, okay fine mistakes are made sometimes. Twice? You very thick.
Rovers cannot find their own arse with both hands. The women’s team, which produced England’s Georgia Stanway among others, has had its entire annual budget cut to £100k – first teamers will be expected to fulfil 16-hour-a-week contracts for an annual payment of just £9,000. Peter Jackson, a local jeweller who was a big backer of said women’s team, and has presented a watch to the Rovers man of the match at every men’s and women’s game for 35 seasons, has been told three days before the start of this one he’s no longer required.
Not a well run club? This isn’t even a very well run three-ring circus.
Into that, belatedly, have been parachuted five quickfire signings. After a flurry of doom-laden prophecies, people now generally seem to think Rovers will be okay, because John Eustace is used to dealing with shit like this and they’ve signed a couple of strikers now. Really? Without Szmodics, this lot would be toast. Danny Batth (33), Andy Weimann (32) and a couple of kids from Everton and Linfield aren’t going to move the needle guys. The strikers are Mahktar Gueye, a 26-year-old who scored eight in 27 last year for Belgium’s Racing White Daring Molenbeek (more from their latest album, later in the show) and Yuki Ohashi, a 29-year-old from Japan’s J-League. I’m trying to hold my tongue here for fear of guaranteeing they score against QPR (they’re Blackburn players after all, of course they’ll score against QPR) but if those two get you where you wanna go I’ll give you the money myself. Kindly put, it’s a huge ask of both, isn’t it? Youth team graduate Harry Leonard is fit again – you, boy, win this game for us.
Maybe I’m wrong. Perhaps, with the Venky’s next date in court due August 20 (11 days shy of the transfer window), salvation is in sight and a whole flurry of late window business may give this squad the boost it so desperately needs. Until then, I just don’t see it. John Eustace is a steady hand, but he’s not a miracle worker. He’s still looking for a first home win after nine attempts. And who’s to say he sticks around and puts up with this nonsense from upstairs if it continues? Put some minge round it for goodness’ sake, he's standing there dressed as a fireman.
Looks like a disaster a long while in the making to me.
Manager: John Eustace Heard about your Blockbusters, you’ll need more than that tonight.
Opposition Profile – @IanHerbert "The first half of last season, as we tend to do, started quite promisingly. Things went downhill from December onwards and culminating in one of the most unusual resignation speeches I’ve ever heard from Jon Dahl Tomasson who did a car crash interview on BBC Radio Lancashire where he just said "you’ll have to ask the board” to every question. He said he didn’t know what was going on, he hadn’t been given resources, and his position was untenable from that moment on. We were then under caretaker management for a win against Stoke before John Eustace was appointed, but he had to wait so long to win a game at home he started slowly claiming he’d been in charge for that Stoke victory. Extraordinarily, this is football after all, it ended up with us staying up by winning away at Leeds and Leicester. I suppose we lucked out getting the Foxes after they’d been on the lash round Jamie Vardy’s all week. At one point on the final day we were one goal away from relegation. All we’ve done since is make the team weaker.
"John Eustace is dependable, reliable. These are the sort of comments you want to read on your plumber’s Google review. This guy will turn up on time. He will do the job. He’ll leave your house nice and tidy when he’s finished. He’s a bit of a Tony Mowbray tribute act really in as much as he’s not going to be hugely adventurous and he seems to be very popular among the players that are left (certainly compared to their fractured relationship with JDT). He was brought in with a mandate to improve morale, make the squad happy, cuddle them if you like, put an arm round the shoulder. In fairness, he’s done that pretty well. He’s calmed the revolution. Is he a football visionary? Does he have an exciting blueprint which will see Blackburn Rovers rampaging towards the Premier League? Categorically not on what we've seen so far. But having said that, like JDT, he’s not being given the resources. The squad is already weak, the much maloigned Gallagher has gone to Stoke, and there are persistent rumours Szmodics is on his way to Ipswich. If we keep letting loan players go back, we release players we don’t think are good enough or won’t sign contracts, we sell those that are worth any money, you end up with a team of 18-year-olds and… bang. I feel sorry for Eustace.
"There are several schools of thought on what’s going on with the ownership. What is unarguable is the taps have been turned off. You can say that’s because the owners are bound by this ongoing legal action in India. Depending how you read the court documents some people think they could still send money but would have to provide almost a bail bond for every pound sent. Others read the documents and say that’s not the case, they can request release of funds but the court has to grant permission. The next hearing is August 20 which is scarily close to the end of the transfer window and well into the new season.
"If I’m being kind, they’re bound by a court case. But they got themselves into it. They're the ones that didn't fill out the forms properly about sending money to the UK when they bought Gary Neville's old house. The Indian enforcement authorities are like a dog with a bone with this, it’s been going on a year already, and meantime Blackburn are having to be a self financing club, where money from the likes of Adam Wharton goes towards keeping his boyhood club alive. With that, the sell on from David Raya, potentially Szmodics, that could be the best part of £40m coming into the club but it seems that’s just keeping the lights on because there’s no money coming from India.
"My question is if we've got wealthy owners who can't or won't send money over, why don’t they just go because they don't add any value. They’re not committed to it. They have no identity with the local region. They have no identity with the club. So, what are they bringing to the party? You may as well sign the club over to the Supporters Trust who can do exactly what the Venky’s are doing at the moment but will at least be well-intentioned.
"I think the only saving grace is we can't finish 25th because I've pretty much got us nailed on for 24th as things stand now. There's a lot of time between now and the end of the window. But what is abundantly clear at this point is we've not brought anybody in to strengthen the team that was weakened after all the loanees went back last year. It is bleak, there’s no getting away from it, but it’s not definitive until the window closes.”
Prediction: 22nd Go get the flag for the rooster.
Last Season: Both regular readers will know I’m not usually in the habit of recommending Preston North End as a viewing spectacle – unless you’re running the waiting room at Dignitas and looking for something to show quietly in the corner and start numbing the customers in advance. Might be worth keeping half an eye on this lot though, for the next few weeks at least.
Preston are an odd fish. In 2022/23 they began the season with five 0-0 draws, two 1-0 wins and a 1-0 defeat. It meant eight games into the season they’d scored twice of a return of 11 points, and conceded only once. Amidst it all, they contrarily won 4-1 away at Huddersfield in the League Cup. Fast forward 12 months and the weirdness was back. PNE began 23/24 unbeaten in eight Championship games, and that included a run of six consecutive victories. In a year when Ipswich, Southampton, Leicester and Leeds set and maintained record breaking points pace at the top of the division, Preston were ahead of all of them on September 23.
They snap out of these runs almost as abruptly as they snap into them. Seven without a win followed, two in 13, three in 16, four in 20… By the time QPR won at Deepdale in December they were all for sacking Ryan Lowe, and hapless Watford came here and won 5-1 the week after.
There followed a rally of wins in which they beat Leeds and Ipswich at home and won 3-0 away at Coventry. Technically that put them back into play-off contention but from the end of September this lot won 12 of 39 games played, averaging 1.12 a game – Birmingham went down averaging 1.08, Plymouth were fourth bottom with 1.10. They finished with five straight defeats without scoring a goal, and while you can mitigate that by saying the season was over, there was nothing to play for and a cruel late defeat to Norwich just as a play-off push was developing smashed belief, it still adds further colour to developing picture.
Much like QPR in the Mick Beale season, flying out of the blocks and taking an early lead in the division meant they were able to sustain Championship status despite being in bottom three form for the majority of the winter and spring. It feels odd saying they finished tenth, narrowly avoiding relegation, but it did have that sort of feel.
Ins: >>> Stefan Teitur Thordarson, 25, CM, Silkeborg, £800k >>> Sam Greenwood, 22, AM, Leeds, Loan
Outs: >>> Alan Browne, 29, CM, Sunderland, Free >>> Ben Woodburn, 24, AM, Salford, Free >>> Greg Cunningham, 33, CB, Galway, Free >>> Lewis Leigh, 20, CM, Bromley, Undisclosed
This Season: You’re going to see a couple of teams in this section with very short relegation odds despite comfortable midtable finishes last season – Preston are the first, Cardiff the second.
As we’ve already outlined, one of the reasons for that is obvious – both started last season well, and then fell away badly after Christmas. They come into this campaign with little momentum, and in Preston’s case quite restless natives. Cardiff seem to be quite happily trundling along believing they’re going to push for the play-offs, but that is not the mood music in this corner of Lancashire.
The other reason is the ‘underlying numbers’ which we keep tossing in as a broad brushstroke term for a collection of stats around xG, chance creation, shot conversion and the like. In the Dean Smith Memorial Justice League tables Preston and Cardiff outperformed their stats last year by a mile relative to the rest of the division – something in the region of 10 or 11 league places. Preston basically create nothing, but score every time they do (Championship’s second lowest xG of 43 but actually scored 56 times); while Cardiff play like complete arseholes and then head in two corners and win (as they did at Loftus Road). The sort of analysts and number crunchers who dominate the sport now, and will certainly be in place at the major bookmakers, look at things like that very closely. And lo we have Preston and Cardiff, tenth and 12th in the Championship, fourth and joint-sixth favourites for the drop.
This is the third full season of Ryan Lowe’s Deepdale reign, and it feels like things need to go pretty damn well if he’s to make a fourth. There continues to be this frankly bizarre gap between what Ryan Lowe says he’s all about and the football he wants his teams to play, and what Preston look like on a week-to-week basis. To listen to him speak you’d think this was some glorious amalgamation of all the horniest bits of Marcelo Bielsa, Kevin Keegan, Pep Guardiola. To watch his PNE side play has you wondering if you haven’t seen more enticing episodes of Call The Midwife.
Lowe could, and indeed Lowe does during his increasingly frequent chips back at a restless support base, point out Preston are competing in a parachute-payment dominated league with a relatively tiny budget and more than holding their own (11th, 11th, 7th, 14th, 9th, 13th, 13th, 12th, 10th). In fact, as you can see, moving steadily in the right direction under his guidance. Give him more resources, get better footballers, see better football. A situation not helped by, once more, assets like Alan Browne running contracts down to a free transfer. Difficult to generate your own talent to sell, or indeed build much squad depth, when you’re running a category three academy amidst a sea of Cat 1 rivals – PNE don’t even have an U21 team, it’s U18s straight to first.
There is, however, something else weird here that is on the manager. Lowe is insistent he wants to play a back three formation with wing backs, and yet here we are most of the way through his sixth transfer window as manager and he’s never once signed an actual wing back. It’s not a particularly expensive position to recruit, and yet time after time PNE are coming out of transfer windows having to field Brad Potts and the like out of position in that role. At Loftus Road last year Liam Millar, a Canadian winger on loan from the Swiss league, was the best attacker in the visiting side… so why was he being played out of position at right wing back?
I haven’t gone so far as to tip them for the drop, mainly because I’ve got a queue of teams in my mind I think could go this year before them, but also because down the spine of the team I do like the players here. Freddie Woodman, helpful aberration at the School End in April notwithstanding, is a decent keeper for the level. Lindsay, Whatmough (when he’s not feeling up the podcast host – don’t get that with Paul Finney) very steady centre backs. Underrated Ali McCann and Ben Whiteman, one of the division’s best midfielders, have now been joined by physical Scandi Stefan Thordarson at a club that always shops well in that part of the world. QPR’s Andy Belk-led recruitment team will watch that Whiteman-Thordarson pairing with interest, they tried hard to sign them both for Rangers. Frokjaer-Jensen, Ris, Osmajic up top now joined by Sam Greenwood… certainly do worse than that. In fact, we probably have. They also play the northwest loan market really well, who knows maybe there’ll be a wingback, or two (!!), come out of that.
Still, it all just feels very, very strange to me. And, it seems, increasingly, the home faithful here.
Manager – Ryan Lowe Good bet in the sack race. The locals are tired of the gaslighting.
Opposition View @Josh_McLoughlin "The up and down nature of last season has been very typical of Ryan Lowe’s tenure. In truth not many thought the impressive start would continue last time round. We were winning games by one goal and barely creating any chances. We were eventually brought back down to earth, and the results started to align with the stats. It’s never a pretty watch under Lowe despite what he might say and despite edging back towards the top six last season ultimately we fell well short after capitulating in the last five games without even scoring a goal. Tenth place on paper may seem decent for Preston but fans know that most managers at this level could have achieved more.
"Lowe is very persistent with his wing back formation but we have yet to sign one on a permanent deal in the six transfer windows he has overseen. He promised exciting football but it is everything but. Many games see us fail to even get a shot on target. There doesn’t seem any creativity in the tactics.
"The one player we had last year capable of producing something out of nothing was loan player Liam Millar. A proper winger who would like to get to the byline and cut into the box. He had to fit into a wing back role though and the Canadian made it clear this summer that if he was to return he would want to play as a natural winger. The decision was made to stick with the wing back formation that has yet to deliver and Millar will no doubt tear it up for another Championship club.
"We need a wing back for each side. A ball playing central defender would be nice too. We’ve brought in Sam Greenwood on loan from Leeds United which is an upgrade on the outgoing Ben Woodburn. We’ve also brought in Icelandic international Stefan Thordarson who will replace Alan Browne who departed after ten years at the club and over 400 games. Big shoes to fill.
"I think it could be a struggle. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Lowe sacked before the end of the year. Many fans have already had enough and are tired of his predictable interviews promising the world and seeing every game through rose tinted glasses. A few bad results and the knives will be out. There are probably just about three teams worse than us in this league so hopefully we have enough about us to stay out of serious trouble.”
Prediction: 16th Hallowed ground.
Last Season: It’s been a long, torturous road back from footballing oblivion for Portsmouth.
Last in the Championship in 2012, they spent four years in League Two between 2013 and 2017 and have taken seven swings at winning League One since then, finishing 8th, 4th, 5th, 8th, 10th and 8th. They like being 8th almost as much as we like being 16th. They’ve done the rounds of Managers You’ve Heard of in that time too. The many different voices of Paul Cook had a stint here between exorcisms, Kenny Jackett four years and the thick end of 200 games, "The Cowley Brothers”…
Eyebrows raised, therefore, and plenty of cynical "oh yeh, have they now…” comments when 18 months ago they took John Mousinho, a player-coach at League One rivals Oxford, and handed him his first ever managerial role. Any scepticism has quickly been jammed back down people’s throats. Mousinho quickly posted six wins and two draws from his first ten games. Pompey were 15th when he took over but went unbeaten through the final 11 games of the season to finish 8th (they love 8th).
Then things really got serious. With a whole clutch of free transfers and loans picked up skillfully by sporting director Rich Hughes (previously seen leading Forest Green’s march up the EFL), Pompey’s unbeaten run extended into the start of the 23/24 campaign… and kept extending. They lost none of their first 19 league and cup games, and in League One eventually won ten and drew six of their first 16. By the time they were beaten in the FA Cup at Chesterfield on November 5, they hadn’t lost in 30 games going back to March 11.
What happened then should have derailed the whole thing. Players started getting injured. Players plural, and injuries severe. One after another had their seasons ended. Tom McIntyre, who you’ll remember playing centre back in the Championship for Reading, was sent off 54 minutes into his debut for a tackle that broke his ankle, and he hasn’t played again since. That was fairly typical of the luck that befell Pompey, and a manager who, it’s worth repeating, was in his first full season as a number one.
One win and three defeats from five games over Christmas looked dicey but back they came – and how. Portsmouth would, incredibly, lose only one of their final 19 league games, winning 13 of them. The pack chased hard but none of Bolton (WD), Derby (DD), Oxford (DW), Peterborough (WW) or Barnsley (WW) could beat the South Coast outfit across the campaign. When they travelled to Blackpool in early March they had won seven and drawn two of the prior nine games, despite an injury list at that point containing Lee Evans, Tom Lowery, Ben Stevenson, Tino Anjorin, Terry Devlin (out for the season), Alex Robertson (out for the season), Josh Dockerill (out for the season), Zak Swanson, Tom McIntyre (season over), Regan Poole (season over) and Joe Morrell (season over). They drew the game at Bloomfield Road, won the next three, and took points off Bolton, Derby, Barnsley and Peterborough in the next seven – the teams all immediately behind them.
Theirs was a triumph of recruitment and retainment by the sporting director, of motivation and tactics by a rookie manager, but also a ridiculous ability to cope in adversity. They won 15 games by a single goal margin and scored eight goals in the last minute or injury time. They just kept going, and going, and getting better, and better. A long time in coming, perhaps. But worth the wait.
Ins: >>> Elias Sorensen, 24, LF, Esbjerg (Denmark), £300k >>> Andre The Friendly Ghost, 25, CM, QPR, Free >>> Matt Ritchie, 35, RM, Newcastle, Free >>> Jordan Williams, 24, RB, Barnsley, Free >>> Josh Murphy, 29, LW, Oxford, Free >>> Jordan Archer, 31, Occasional GK, QPR, Free >>> Jacob Farrell, 21, LB, Gold Coast, Undisclosed
Outs >>> Joe Rafferty, 30, RB, Rotherham, Free >>> Sean Raggett, 30, CB, Rotherham, Free >>> Lee Evans 29, CM, Blackpool, Free >>> Matt Macey, 29, GK, Colchester, Free >>> Harry Jewitt-White, 20, CM, Crusaders, Free >>> Josh Dockerill, 19, CB, Havant, Free >>> Jack Sparkes, 23, LB, Peterborough, Undisclosed >>> Toby Steward, 19, GK, Tonbridge, Loan >>> Josh Martin, 22, LW, Released >>> Ryan Schofield, 24, GK, Released >>> Haji Mnoga, 22, RB, Released >>> Liam Vincent, 21, LM, Released
This Season: The good news, of course, is that Portsmouth not only bring a team brimming over with confidence after an outrageous 18 months in which they’ve won 41, drawn 24 and lost only 11 of the games they’ve played in all comps, but also get a good few of their walking wounded from last season’s trench battle back fresh for the new campaign. McIntyre, who I always rated at Reading, and Regan Poole, who I would very much have liked QPR to sign from Lincoln, headline that comeback cast.
Into that has been added veteran winger Matt Ritchie, a sort of Albert Adomah-style homecoming to his boyhood club at 35, and Josh Murphy, who starred on the wing in Oxford’s rival promotion bid from League One earlier this year. Former Newcastle trainee forward Elias Sorensen is back from his Danish homeland where he scored 39 in 78 for Esbjerg to bolster the attack – one of a whole clutch of punts taken by Championship clubs on little known European forwards this summer. Given Hughes’ previous record in the transfer market, this one might have something about him. Callum Lang, who I always really rated at Wigan, is back in the Championship.
There are, however, plenty of reasons to be fearful. Ritchie is 35 now, at best it’ll be the sort of Indian summer we got out of Adomah. Murphy was, indeed, impressive on the run in for Oxford, but had been mostly shite and injured for years before that. They’re very wedded to, and reliant on, Marlon Pack, who’s living his dream playing for the club he supports but is himself now 33.
Occasional goalkeeper Jordan Archer has been picked up from QPR (any prize from the middle shelf for a full sighting out in the wild) and, worse still, Andre The Friendly Ghost has landed here after pisballing about for Sheff Utd on trial all summer. He is, as we well know, not one you want in the trenches with you – or, indeed, out on the football field where as QPR’s creative, ball playing midfielder he contributed two goals, two assists and two thick as pig shit red cards in three years. Ipswich got rid of him and got promoted two divisions, QPR shifted him when in the bottom three and survived, Birmingham picked him up when in midtable and got relegated. Anybody touching this with a 25-foot shitty stick needs to be sectioned under the mental health act. He’s no kind of replacement for Man City’s Alex Robertson, who was here on loan but priced out of Pompey’s way by Cardiff’s £3m offer.
Their diabolical luck with fitness and injuries has already struck. I was fascinated to see how rampaging forward Colby Bishop fared at this level after 21 goals last year and 24 the year before. He’d previously been equally as prolific for Accrington and Leamington further down the ladder and is the fulcrum of the Pompey attack. Unfortunately, routine summer medical screening has turned up a heart issue. Terrible for him, and it goes without saying we wish him the best, but as we banged on about with Plymouth last year, and have repeated several times in these previews, one of the big things to look for is where the goals are coming from and Portsmouth’s have just disappeared onto a hospital waiting list. Yusini Yengi got nine mostly as a sub last year and had the EFL’s best goals-per-minute ratio. Paddy Lane got 12. Abu Kamara, a revelation on loan from Norwich, is back with his parent club. Good luck lads.
The more I looked at Portsmouth’s squad versus Oxford’s recruitment this summer the more I doubted myself for maybe putting these two the wrong way around. There is, and I’ll come onto this in the Derby write up as well, this weird bias that’s sometimes hard to shake around ‘size’ of club, the support base, and the stadium. I look at Portsmouth and I think Fratton Park, huge crowds, hostile place to go, they’ll probably be okay. Oxford, meanwhile, soulless three-sided ground with 9,000 attendances next to a bowling alley, probably all be a bit too much for them. Swap their squads and transfers over, though, and I still think that. Likewise, Derby who I’ve tipped to stay up, but if their squad and their signings were playing for Paul Warne at Rotherham I’d undoubtedly have them bottom.
I’m just showing my workings/failings here really before saying I think Pompey will be just about alright.
Manager: John Mousinho 53% win percentage, 11 defeats in 76 games as a manager… these are Tim Sherwood at Tottenham numbers.
Opposition View: Jonny Barrett @PompeyJonny "Despite winning the league fairly comfortably in the end - 97 points with only five defeats all season - for huge parts of the season it never felt as if we were actually any good. It was one of those seasons where I’m fairly sure we nervily beat Carlisle 1-0 about 15 times. Opposition fans would regularly appear under our tweets at full time, after invariably having been defeated, to tell us we were actually shit and it was in fact Bolton who were The Best Team in League One©.
"Yet it was a team that always seemed to find a way when it mattered most. I lost count of the games won in the eighth minute of stoppage time, the games we went behind and came back to win and the games that felt "must win” that were inevitably won. As shown by the club’s brilliant full time on pitch videos following victories, the spirit in the dressing room was unlike anything seen since the club’s previous title campaign, when we won League Two in 2017. This was epitomised best in our title winning victory over Barnsley where we went from 2-1 down in the 83rd minute to 3-2 up in the 89th. The videos of the celebrations that followed as fans and players mixed together without distinction showed that this was a group who understood how lucky there to represent the city. John Mousinho had somehow managed to put together a team much greater than the sum of its parts.
"When John Mousinho was brought into the club into the club in 2022, any Pompey fan who tells you they were enthused is a liar. After the failed experiment with the eminently likeable but, ultimately, out of their depth Cowley brothers may fans, myself included, wanted someone with experience of promotion and, if possible, someone who played some vaguely exciting football. And then we got Oxford’s fucking set piece coach who was still registered as a player. Fucking brilliant. With us in midtable mediocrity and probably looking more over our shoulder than up at the table he came in and steadied the ship even finishing the season on an impressive 11 game unbeaten run, albeit with their somehow managing to be about 15 draws in there. This was incredibly important in setting the foundations for next season though as this, along with some very shrewd recruitment, set the foundations for what would eventually turn into a 27 unbeaten game run in the league, unsurprisingly a club record.
"I won’t lie and claim he won me over straight away- you can probably find tweets of mine in March 2022 calling for his head. But slowly but surely I came to see he was something completely different. It wasn’t just the unbeaten run, which didn’t hurt, but listening to him speak. He was eloquent and incisive. When being interviewed, you could see that he was listening to the question and then actually answering it, not just reeling off prepared cliches. He’s not in the mould of a traditionally loved Pompey manager- historically Pompey have loved passionate speakers like Paul Cook and Alan Ball, old school gentlemen like Jim Smith and Frank Burrows or cunts like Harry Redknapp. Mousinho isn’t like that. He’s painfully middle class, softly spoken and thoughtful. He’s not in the mould of the typically person who ‘gets’ Pompey- a prerequisite for anyone who so much as pops into the Maccies by the ground, let alone manages the club. Yet he has curated a dressing room of players that will die for each other, die for him, die for this football club. By all accounts the bond in that dressing room last season was clearly special from day one, long before promotion looked assured. People who had been around the club for decades could see that he understood what it took to manage a club like ours and get is back to where it needed to be.
"A huge core of the team that won the league last year remains but similarly some big figures have left. Most painful was the release of Sean Raggett who, in his five years at the club, transformed himself from a figure of ridicule the like I hadn’t seen in years to one of the club’s greatest ever cult-heroes who came in as injury cover in November and remained an ever-present in one of the football league’s leanest defences last season. Personally, I thought he’d done enough for the club to deserve a year sitting on the bench in the Championship but Mousinho showed he saw no room for sentimentality in approaching this season. Similarly, the almost ever-present dressing room leader Joe Rafferty was cut loose and a contract option was not picked up on the volatile and injury-prone, but still very talented, Joe Morrell. The return to their parent clubs of the hugely impressive loanee pairing of Alex Robertson and Abu Kamara will also be hugely felt.
"As a result of the outgoings, a lot of new signings were required and it’s been a bit of a mixed bag. Picking up Oxford’s playoff final hero Josh Murphy, with significant Championship experience under his belt, on a free seems like a steal as does the acquisition of Barnsley captain and full back Jordan Williams. From then it gets a bit more interesting. The acquisition of young full back Jacob Farrell from the Central Coast Mariners is by all accounts a very exciting pick up, as is the signing of Elias Sørensen, having his medical as I write this, who scored 24 goals along with 12 assists in 30 games in the Danish third tier last season. The loan signing of Sammy Silvera from Boro could interesting, with Boro fans reporting a number of exciting if inconsistent cameos off the bench last season. He highlights a key problem for us though- his 37 Championship appearances, of which just 16 were starts, represent the only Championship football played by any of our current squad last season.
"With the season just over a week away we, at a minimum, need two more centre midfielders and a centre half. There are positives - Regan Poole who was looking like a young Beckenbauer until a freak injury last November and former Reading Man Tom McIntyre who sustained a season ending injury 55 minutes in to debut in February will feel like new signings. There is Championship experience dotted around the squad as well- captain Marlon Pack has played pretty much all of his career there though at 33 you’d think some legs alongside him couldn’t hurt. The aforementioned Murphy and Williams have decent Championship CVs but after that it becomes a bit sparse. At this point I’m convinced the best use of AI would be to create us a couple of Jonathan Hogg clones and a spare Darragh Lennihan for a rainy day.
"The outcome of the season will depend hugely on the outcome of the rest of the window. Being realistic, 21st or higher is a fucking great result. I think Oxford and Derby will both struggle and there does appear to be a lot of dross that barely survived in the Champ last season so that’s encouraging. The heartbreaking news that our top scorer from the last two seasons Colby Bishop requires heart surgery and cannot be counted on to play this year will be a huge blow but it gives Kusini Yengi a chance to shine who, after coming to the club last year with a fairly average A League goalscoring record, went on to contribute nine goals in 26 league games with only 7 starts and ended up with the best goals to minute ratio of any player in the top 4 leagues. He’s a perfect example of the ability of our scouting staff to spot value where others wouldn’t and if similar summer gambles pay off in the same way then maybe we could surprise a few people.
"More than anything, however, it’s just nice to be back in footballing relevance. With much of my childhood spent in the Premier League, the last decade or so has given me some incredible moments from the brink of extinction to fan ownership to league titles to Wembley returns but it also has been pretty dour. I have been to Fleetwood six times which is more than anyone should ever have to go to Fleetwood, including residents of Fleetwood. Going back to proper football grounds is a tantalising prospect, with there being a six or seven clubs available to add to my 92- including QPR actually, I do get a ticket in the away end for writing this, yeah? After last year’s rollercoaster however I would settle for it being something that Pompey seasons very rarely are these days - boring.”
Prediction: 19th We’ve been wobbling on them all week – this was our last write up and why this piece is so late – but we’ve decided to stick to our guns and back them to just about be okay.
Last Season: I could give you a nice general intro here and say since Cardiff City were last in the Premier League (2018/19, Neil Warnock in charge) things have been a bit of a grind.
Instead, I’m going to show you. Through their Championship league placings since then (5th, 8th, 18th, 21st, 12th), and through the managers who have led them there (Neil Harris, Mick McCarthy, Steve Morison, Mark Hudson, Sabri Lamouchi). Rattling round in an identikit blue bowl twice as big as it needs be, with a red hat stuck on one side constructed during that bit where the chairman wanted to cosplay dragons, watching this sort of football, from these sorts of managers… Sixty cigarettes a day, every day.
So, when Erol Bulut turned up, with a couple of notable league finishes and cup runs in his native Turkey with the country’s less fashionable clubs, the locals were keen for something, anything, new and exciting. Their annual "GARETH BALE’S COMING HOME LADS” stalking of Fabrizio Romano/FlightRadar24/any blacked-out Land Rover coming within 50 miles of the place finally yielded… the fossilised remains of Aaron Ramsey. They were 2-0 up at Leeds on day one before being cruelly pegged back in stoppage time so, even though they contrived to somehow lose at home to Gareth Ainsworth’s hapless QPR outfit, there was a good deal of optimism as seven league wins arrived in the next 11 games. That included a rabble rousing 2-0 win at home to Swansea, which will always endear you to the people of this city.
There was another hot streak in February too, where four wins on the bounce lifted the Bluebirds back up the table after a lean winter, including the remarkable 2-1 home victory against Ipswich where they scored twice in injury time having trailed.
Things undoubtedly tailed off though. Both performances and results. Cardiff were pretty wretched through the second half of the campaign, particularly at home where only Sunderland lost more than their ten defeats, propped up results wise by the division-leading ability to score from set plays. Their 2-1 win at Loftus Road was instructive – second best for much of the game, under the pump near the end, but victorious by capitalising twice on QPR’s ludicrous zonal marking system utilised on corners that day.
With Bulut, like Lamouchi before him, allowed to drift into the end of the season not knowing if he was sticking around or not, the team lost six of its last nine games including a home defeat to Sunderland (!!), a 4-1 at home to Boro, and a frankly ludicrous 5-2 defeat on the last day away to Rotherham.
Ins >>> Alex Robertson, 21, AM, Man City, £3m >>> Wilfried Kanga, 26, CF, Hertha Berlin, Loan >>> Calum Chambers, 29, CB, Aston Villa, Free >>> Anwar El Ghazi, 29, RW, Mainz, Free >>> Chris Willock, 26, AM, QPR, Free
Outs >>> Ebou Adams, 28, CM, Derby, £1m >>> Ollie Denham, 22, CB, Sligo, Free >>> Sheyi Ojo, 27, RW, Released >>> Romaine Sawyers, 32, CM, Released
Next Season: Bulut has stayed on after protracted negotiations, but that end to Cardiff’s campaign has many casting worried glances in the direction of the Welsh capital.
Like Preston, and to some extent Millwall, City outperformed their trendy underlying numbers by the distance of about half a league table. In total, 20 of the 53 goals they scored came from dead ball situations. They were 21st in the league for xG, progressive passes and progressive carries. Only Preston and Rotherham had fewer shots and only five teams scored fewer goals. Only one team lost more at home, only two played more long balls. Cardiff completed just 28 through balls in 46 games all season – only three teams did worse. They averaged less than 45% possession. They conceded 70 times – only Blackburn, Rotherham and Huddersfield shipped more.
These are the sort of numbers that scare the modern bookie, and are why you can get Cardiff – ostensibly a midtable team last year – as short as 9/4 to go down this year. In our Patreon 1-24s with Steve from @AnalyticsQPR, he placed this lot bottom three.
The signings, until this morning (more on this shortly), do nothing to impress. Cardiff absolutely love a free transfer on a massive wage with a questionable appearance record, so no surprise to see Chris Willock, Chris Willock’s dad and Chris Willock’s elastic bands and chewing gum hamstrings pitch up here – imagine angling after a lucrative free transfer for two and a half years and ending up going to Cardiff. Calum Chambers is also here, only 29 remarkably, but only started three matches for Aston Villa last year and nine the year before that. Anwar El Ghazi is here, three clubs and 12 starts in two years. There is no football knowledge or experience at this club between the manager and megalomaniac, absent chairman Vincent Tan, and it frequently shows.
Now, what they have done this morning is sign Man City’s 21-year-old midfielder Alex Robertson for £3m on a four-year deal. That’s much, much more like it. He was hugely impressive in the first half of Portsmouth’s promotion campaign before injury curtailed his season in January and they were among a string of clubs who wanted him this summer. Better. Do more things like that.
In addition, Cardiff’s downturn this year coincided with Aaron Ramsey being injured. The Welsh international only featured seven times after September 16. Add him back in, add Robertson to the midfield, get the fit and interested Chris Willock of the first couple of years at QPR rather than the moody ambulance botherer of the last two, and things are looking a good deal brighter. They rattled through three not very good goalkeepers last year, you’d think that will be more settled this time although no new arrivals yet.
It’s also time for Rubin Colwill. He’s long had the potential, long threatened, long done it in fits and starts. He’s had bad injuries, we’ve been told he’s still growing into his considerable frame, he’s had the weight of a city’s expectations on him. He scored three goals last year and none in his final 29 appearances. It’s time now. He’ll be 23 shortly. It’s time. And if this is his big, breakout year then that will be transformational for a team currently relying on a dire set of forwards – Yakou Meite, Kion Etete, Wilfried Kanga, Callum Robinson, my God.
Manager: Erol Bulot
Opposition View: Phil Bushby @bushby_p "Last season was really strange. Supporters got excited about the play offs and relegation in equal measure. We had a relatively high win percentage but also a high loss percentage - we veered between success and disaster. The style of play - especially at home - left a lot of fans bemused and frustrated. We seemed to sit back and respect teams on too many occasions. Often our away form was better than our home form. The two games v QPR perhaps illustrated these points perfectly. We missed having a settled striker and also two of our best players (Ramsey and O’Dowda) missed the majority of the season. Robinson was also out of favour and did not perform when he had the chance. Hopefully all of these will be back and able to influence more this time around. After a very strange season - mid table was therefore about right for us!
"Bulut is a good, pragmatic choice and I am happy he has stayed. We need the stability and I think he can do a good job. Generally, he has done well. Sometimes his style of play, team selection and substitution decisions left a lot of fans wondering what was happening. But I think it will be good to see how he does in season two with more of his choice of players in the squad.
"The ‘underlying numbers’ were concerning. But again with some of more creative and attacking players all out last season then perhaps not surprising. I also question the style of play. When we were on the front foot we scored goals but, all too often, we sat back and then relied on set piece goals. I hope to see a change in that approach this season and with a better squad at his disposal the manager will hopefully agree with me.
"Recruitment has looked decent so far. I think there is always a risk with Championship signings. Either they are relatively unknown (Kanga) or come with an element of inconsistency/ injury history. Players such as Chambers, El Ghazi and even your old friend Mr Willock would come into that category. But all of these players will improve the squad if they can perform well. I think we still need a striker and a creative/ attacking midfielder. Plus, I hope we see the Chris Willock from a couple of seasons back, not so much the 23/24 version.
"I remain excited by the young players coming through such as King, Giles, Ashford and the Colwill brothers. Combine this to big players getting fit - Ramsey, Robinson and O’Dowder and the returning loan players such as Isaac Davies then I do not think that we need too many more coming in. We have also kept our players (so far) although there has been some interest in McGuinness. I hope that he stays as our defence looked reasonable last year.
"I actually feel better than I did at the start of last season. I think the squad looks OK. I am pleased we have stability in the manager and the owner seems to be backing him with a transfer budget. We need quality in this close season to improve what we have rather than quantity of players coming in. I think the signings we have made, the youngsters coming through and the returning players all have the potential to make sure we do better this season.”
Prediction: 18th
Last Season: Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises explains that you go bankrupt in two ways - gradually, then suddenly.
Derby County’s mega-meltdown was a long time in the making, and dramatic when it finally hit in earnest. There was so much fuckwittery went on during Mel Morris’ disastrous reign of terror at Pride Park you forget bits. Remember when they were fifth in the Championship but sacked Paul Clement because he wasn’t "building on the Derby way”? Or signing Wayne Rooney and getting an online casino to foot the bill? Or taking a Championship team with Harry Wilson, Mason Mount and Fikayo Tomori in it and giving it to… Frank Lampard to manage.
You would try and sympathise a bit. After all, our victory over them in the 2014 play-off final was not only daylight robbery on the pitch but came at a time when we were flagrantly breaching every FFP rule in the book and Derby were living within their means. A later Wembley defeat to Aston Villa, when Lampard gave a clear indication of what was to come in his managerial career with a horribly botched team selection, was a real sliding doors moment because Villa were every bit as badly run and financially fucked as Derby were and whoever lost that game was going to be screwed for the next ten years. Villa win, go to the Premier League, now in the Champions League and everybody’s talking about what a wonderful success story and manager they’ve got.
Nevertheless, the rule breaking, dodgy work arounds and outright cheating of the Morris era were so obvious and blatant by the end it had become ridiculous. With County’s Twitter cohort greeting each new dodgy deal in turn with yet more "Mel’s got the EFL on strings” memes, sympathy was in short supply when the shit got real. Having it jammed down our throats by a sycophantic media just what an unreal job Wayne Rooney was doing "under the circumstances”, while at one point winning one of 22 away games, meant there was plenty of glee and schadenfreude in the air when the trapdoor to League One finally creaked open. Not since the collapse of the Fyre Festival stranded all of the worst sort of influencers in the middle of the ocean with no food, water, Migos or Major Lazer have people been quite so stoked to watch something go down.
When we’re talking about how Derby are doing these days, how Paul Warne is managing the team, what sort of recruitment they’re able to get off the ground, it must always be held in that context. This wasn’t a hydrogen tank explosion, you couldn’t just call the fire brigade to this, and that’s not just the feed water making you sick – this was a full on fucktastrophe, graphite on the roof, core melting down, the works. A previously productive academy was tortured almost out of all existence and is having to be completely rebuilt.
Plenty of similarities with our own financial collapse of 2001 which plunged us into a Second Division mire it took three years to escape from even while being allowed to sign players of the quality of Bircham, Shittu, Cook, Gallen, Furlong and so on. Derby had a whole load of transfer embargoes and financial restrictions placed upon them as punishment for what had gone on, in addition to the myriad problems that come when a club of that size (and therefore overheads) go into a league where you’re playing Shrewsbury and Cheltenham. New owner David Clowes, a much needed grownup in the room, is doing his best with a shovel, but these things take time.
They’ve made it back to the Championship after two years, finishing seventh in the first and second more recently. Was it particularly thrilling, exciting, enjoyable? No, it was a right old slog. It is a right old slog. Was it particularly aesthetically pleasing, good to watch, entertaining? No, it was Paul Warne football. Old videos recently resurfaced of Rams fans telling him in no uncertain terms what they thought of his football. Athleticism, speed, physicality, running, bobble hats. But if you do need to get out of League One, and boy did Derby need to get out of League One, then that is a pretty surefire way to go about it, and as safe a bet as you can find manager wise to get it done. Twice at critical points in the season – over the gruelling winter/Christmas period, and then again on the run in - they put a long unbeaten run and series of victories together just when they needed it to hold off the likes of Bolton and Peterborough.
It was job done, and really that is all that mattered.
Ins: >>> Ebou Adams, 28, CM, Cardiff, £1m >>> Kenzo Goodmijn, 22, CM, Alkmaar, £800k >>> Ben Osborn, 29, CM, Sheff Utd, Free >>> Corey Blackett-Taylor, 26, RW, Charlton, Free >>> Kayden Jackson, 30, CF, Ipswich, Free >>> Jerry Yates, 27, CF, Swansea, Loan >>> David Ozoh, 19, DM, Palace, Loan >>> Rohan Luthra, 22, GK, Cardiff, Free
Outs >>> Louie Sibley, 22, CM, Oxford, Free >>> Joe Wildsmith, 28, GK, West Brom, Free >>> Korey Smith, 33, CM, Cambridge, Free >>> Conor Hourihane, 33, CM, Barnsley, Free >>> Dwight Gayle, 34, CF, Released >>> Martyn Waghorn, 34, CF, Released >>> Scott Loach, 36, GK, Released
This Season: All that matters now is staying in the Championship. This is also unlikely to be pretty. Glass half full, they beat Real Valladolid in pre-season. Half empty, they also lost at Shrewsbury.
First and foremost they’ve shaken hands with a lot of the 30-somethings they had to bring in and rely on when all they could do were free transfers. Conor Hourihane, Korey Smith, Dwight Gayle and Martyn Waghorn, average age 76, have all ‘gone to live on a farm’. Irritatingly there has also been a talent drain, with Max Bird following Jason Knight to Bristol City and Louie Sibley heading to Oxford over the last 12 months. They’d have been very useful.
In their place come a fairly ropey set of new recruits, particularly in attack where Swansea have bombed out Jerry Yates after only a year and the middling Kayden Jackson arrives aged 30 from the bench at Ipswich. They join 33-year-old James Collins who’s going around again after 14 goals last year, and Conor Washington, whose abilities at this level we know all about, in a less than inspiring collection of forwards. Still, good news for Rams fans, now I’ve said that this lot will run an-absolute-mok in the two games against QPR. Given how integral we’ve been to their demise over the last ten years, and just how many times we seem able to score last minute winners against County, how sweet would that be for them if it comes to pass.
Yates was previously with Warne at Rotherham, rarely played, and the more mouthy members of his extended family spent much of that time on social media gobbing off about what bloody awful football the manager played. This is certainly a big season for Warne. An emotionally intelligent, hugely likeable personality, he has nevertheless had a very definite ceiling to his managerial abilities so far. His focus on fitness and athleticism, sound characters and attitude, has served him well through the harsh League One winters. In the Championship, though, you need more than good blokes who’ll run about a lot. His Rotherham team always came up short in this division, particularly away from home where at one stage they won once in two whole seasons (guess where that was).
Things really started to knit together last season when Ebou Adams was secured on loan from Cardiff. His permanent signing was priority one for the summer, and they’ve got that done. As ever in a Warne side, the centre backs were fairly brilliant last year - Curtis Nelson and Eiran Cashin swept the player of the year boards. Nathaniel Mendez-Laing and Korey Blackett-Taylor are here to try and add the Ogbene-style pace on the counter attack in wide areas. Kane Wilson failed at Bristol City, but he’s got a high ceiling and I’d like to see him get another swing at the level. Craig Forsyth is still chugging around here a good five years after I said he looked on his last legs but there’s a stated intention to add more youthful exuberance to a stodgy looking squad in the loan market. There is a goalkeeper, Jacob Widell Zetterstrom, waiting in the wings, but he’s finishing up a European campaign elsewhere and meanwhile Joe Wildsmith has gone to West Brom. Less than ideal with the big kick off this weekend. Ex-Cardiff Rohan Luthra is an underwhelming eleventh hour stopgap.
Ed Smith and Mo Bobat, the analytics duo behind England’s limited overs success in cricket in recent years, are the new joint heads of sporting intelligence here. Fancy.
I don’t know, part of me thinks they’ll have just about enough, but then another thinks there’s an element of that ‘stadium bias’ I’ve talked about in the Portsmouth section here. If Paul Warne was still at Rotherham, with this exact squad, and this summer recruitment, I’d be saying ‘no chance, sorry, brave effort, but bottom three’. But because it’s Derby and it’s Pride Park and it’s 30,000 home fans every week I find myself leaning towards probably okay. Just as I’ve got Portsmouth to stay up, and Fratton Park as some kind of fortress, while I’ve put Oxford bottom despite their summer recruitment being streets ahead.
Maybe the real conclusion to draw here is I don’t know what I’m talking about. We shall shortly find out.
Manager: Paul Warne 150/1 for the England job, same as Zinedine Zidane.
Opposition View: Ollie Wright @DerbyCountyBlog "How were the two years away? To employ a Lampardian transition: ‘Well, there’s not much point plugging the books I published about it to this audience, is there Clive! No, but seriously, it was horrible.’
"As you’ll know from your own dalliance a while back, the standard in League One is pitiful. The cliff edge from second tier to third tier is insane. The first season had an element of novelty to it, I suppose, but the second season was just gruelling. You play against clubs from towns where football isn’t even the most important sport and you lose to some of them. The majority of fans at Pride Park rocked up expecting us to win every game easily and moaned their heads off whenever we didn’t. In short, it’s nasty and I never want to go back.
"Paul Warne is a good man, big on emotional intelligence, camaraderie, decency… and set plays. Getting out of League One under Warne was a grind. In the first season, with a team put together while Liam Rosenior was the manager, we at least had the magician David McGoldrick, who was a joy to watch. The second season was very low on entertainment and flair, but Derby’s defence was basically impregnable due to the excellence of Curtis Nelson and Eiran Cashin.
"Warne’s vision is to build a lightning counter-attacking team. Part of the problem during his League One period was that he didn’t have the sprinters up-front that he wanted, with the key exception of Nathaniel Mendez-Laing. He also craved all-action destroyers in the middle of the park, instead of the more urbane passers recruited for Rosenior. Solving that issue by signing Ebou Adams on loan from Cardiff last season turned out to be the crucial ingredient that the team needed to get over the line.
"I think it’s important to briefly recap for readers from the outside looking in exactly where we are in terms of rebuilding the squad from scratch. Post-administration, the EFL mandated that Derby couldn’t pay transfer fees as part of a two-year business plan (basically the club operating with financial stabilisers). A squad of free agents, largely veterans, was duly scrambled together for League One. Most of those players, such as Conor Hourihane and Korey Smith, have now left, which is fine as they weren’t suitable for Warne’s needs, or the Championship in general. However, the outflux has left Warne stating that he needed at least a dozen new players this summer. We’ve signed six at the time of writing and I’m hoping to see for four or five more coming in to give us a genuinely competitive squad.
"The main attribute Warne demands from his players is athleticism. In attack, he’s signed a mobile duo in Kayden Jackson and Jerry Yates. The midfield rebuild has seen Ben Osborn (free agent), Kenzo Goudmijn (from AZ Alkmaar), David Ozoh (on loan from Crystal Palace) recruited, with the cult hero Adams also returning permanently.
"Based on his exceptional contribution on loan last season, it felt logical to bring Adams back, as he added so much to the character and personality of the team and provides an element of continuity amid a wider remake and remodelling. The 19 year-old Ozoh seems to be essentially an apprentice for Adams and those two working in tandem as a double shield should make Derby difficult to play through. The 22 year-old Goudmijn is here to add much-needed technique and creativity, while the experienced and versatile Osborn, who was born in Derby, could be used predominantly as a left back or wing-back.
"Warne has said his next priorities are a goalkeeper, a quick centre back, a creative central midfielder who can also play as a number ten and another striker. In other words, the spine from back to front still needs a bolster. Getting quality in all of those key positions on a budget is going to be a challenge, although the goalkeeper is hopefully done (as I write this, we’re impatiently awaiting the arrival of a giant Swedish goalkeeper, Jacob Widell Zetterstrom, who has reportedly agreed to join Derby once Djurgarden have finished battering a team from Luxembourg in the UEFA Conference League qualifiers).
"I’m hopeful that the squad will be significantly stronger by the end of the window, but based on where we are at the moment, I’d be obliged to take 21st and bare survival if offered it now. Without the reckless Mel Morris inventing new short-term ‘economic levers’ to pull, the club’s progress is going to have to be slow and incremental. However, assuming that the goalkeeper who comes in is up to the task, I believe that Warne will be able to cajole at least 50 points out of his squad and keep us in the division.”
Prediction: 20th Poor, but not quite that poor.
Last Season: Millwall’s 23/24 began and ended in tragedy. Beloved chairman John Berylson, one of the Championship’s very best owners, was killed in an accident on the eve of the season. Ten months later, with the South Londoners just about safe in the Championship, Grimsby-born Montenegro international goalkeeper Matija Sarkic also died suddenly. In that terrible context, everything else in this preview is set into context.
The football in between was, perhaps understandably, difficult. As we often do, we’d tipped Millwall for a play-off push in 22/23, and with a 3-1 lead over Blackburn at half time on the final day they were indeed in the six. A collapse to a farcical 4-3 loss followed. Although we doubled down again on tipping them to do well in 23/24, it was clear the hangover from that – and possibly the effect of losing their inspirational club leader – was substantial. Rowett had been there four years, built his team, wrestled them into a position to compete, taken his shot, and missed. There wasn’t a lot left in the tank, nor credit in the bank with supporters, when they began with four defeats from seven including a 4-0 home cup humiliation by League One Reading and a 3-0 loss at The Den to much-hated Leeds.
Our summer opinion that they were settled and solid under Gary Rowett was bollocks, they were stale and stodgy. The dramatic implosion of their push for sixth the previous season had clearly sapped the last of their reserves and his time as manager. Zian Flemming failed to fire again, often benched. Rowett and club parted ways amicably/wearily in October.
Step forwards Chelsea puppy farmer Joe Edwards for his first managerial role. Well, everybody else is going trendy youth coach and play out from the back, why not Millwall? Because Marxism that’s why. Absolute disasterclass. Four wins in 18. In a 2-0 loss at Loftus Road I thought they, along with Sunderland, were the worst team we played after Christmas.
Drifting to what we felt looked a certain relegation there was only one thing for it. Neil Harris won eight of the last 13 games, including all of the last five (four of them 1-0) by spitting on it and calling it foreplay. It’s the Harris way, it’s the Millwall way, and it worked for them. The xG evangelists will tell you this lot, along with Preston and Cardiff, were the most out-of-position finishers in the division last season. "Penalty FC, Corner FC”. Do they care? Rising up to 13th, winning the last five games conceding only one goal in the process? I highly doubt it.
Ins >>> Macauley Langstaff, 28, CF, Notts County, £800k >>> Japhet Tanganga, 25, CB, Spurs, Free >>> Liam Roberts, 29, GK, Boro, Free >>> Lucas Jensen, 25, GK, Lincoln, Undisclosed
Outs >>> Alex Mitchell, 22, CB, Charlton, Undisclosed >>> Bartosz Bialkowski, 35, GK, Released
This Season: The big question around Millwall is whether Harris’ considerable rescue act can translate to a full season.
After all, it’s less than five years ago they shook hands with the club legend and sent him on his way because the wheeled cannon and Big Posh Matt up front had become too repetitive and tedious even for this lot. Since then, Harris has underperformed at Cardiff, Gillingham and Cambridge and, if anything looked to be drifting down in his career towards gigs at Sutton and Bromley rather than elevating himself back up to Championship level.
The Lions’ results under him through the spring were, however, exceptional. They won eight of their 13 games, starting with a 2-1 at eventually promoted Southampton, and including a 1-0 at home to champions Leicester. They are second in the table, behind only Ipswich, since Harris took over. Could it be, after trying to go all modern and trendy with Joe Edwards and it almost costing them their place in the league, they’ve simply come to realise they are a unique club that demands a unique style and approach to football for which Neil Harris is just about the best bloke out there to execute it? If he goes again, who next? Mick Beale, in a Peaky Blinders hat, insisting everybody call him Micky B?
Business so far has been limited, but really quite impressive. Lincoln took off in League One under Michael Skubala through the second half of the season and goalkeeper Lucas Jensen, standing 6ft 7ins, was particularly impressive within that. In tragic circumstances, that’s not a bad signing at all. Likewise, Tottenham’s Japhet Tanganga, a huge part of the Harris revival while on loan here and picked up for free amidst seemingly little competition from the rest of the division. I find that bizarre. Great pick up.
Then there’s Macauley Langstaff. A non-league journeyman who exploded into life in Mike Williamson’s creative Gateshead set up, scoring 34 goals in 42 starts and 14 sub appearances, before being co-opted into Notts County’s return to former glories where he bagged a fairly ridiculous 71 in 96 appearances across a promotion from the Conference and first year in League Two. This one fascinates me because at 27 he’s only got one year of Football League experience in him, and that in the bottom division. Despite his record breaking goalscoring exploits, he was available for just £700k and, much like when we go shopping, if Millwall have been able t pick him up it means not many other clubs were keen. Why is that? Mayhaps we’ll find out. There’s also a huge doubt in my mind that scoring all those goals in the unique styles that Williamson and Notts County’s Luke Williams play will translate to playing up front in Neil Harris’ back-to-front wheeled cannon football. Had he followed Williams to Swansea, where he’s building a side with immense width that puts lots of low crosses in for strikers all over again, I’d fancy his chances a bit more I think. Here I’m parking him under ‘intriguing’.
You would think they’ll be in the market for target man striker, perhaps on loan, between now and the end of the months.
Zian Fleming had a difficult second album in 23/24, but had previously shown himself to be a terrific player in this league. Joe Bryan was injured for most of last term, forcing one-time QPR target Danny McNamara to play out of position down the left, so if he can get fit and back to something like his Bristol City and Fulham form that’ll be a huge boost. Ryan Longman going back to Hull less so.
At a time of grief and upheaval, in the boardroom and the squad, it feels a risky point to be bombing out the long serving CEO, COO and director of football. Our own Steve Gallen is the new man overseeing football operations here.
Look, we love nothing more than a gentle ribbing of Millwall. The Peaky Blinders hats and Stone Island jackets, the sudden interest in "cultural Marxism”, the belt-it-long-and-smash-em-up style of football, that time they "Milllllllllllllllllllllllllll”’d their way all the way into a Nahki Wells’ winner, that time they put Mellow Magic on during half time to pay respects to the Queen, that 50 page message board thread explaining to "Keef” why he didn’t need to buy his season ticket seat for the West Ham game because it already belonged to him as his season ticket… they’re a funny lot.
Things like the death of Sarkic, though, transcend sport and footballing rivalries. Unimaginable for his friends and family. We know from our own Kiyan Prince and Ray Jones tragedies how things like that can affect a club and a team, and Millwall have had two of them in 12 months. We also know how little whatever affect that does have on the football results matters in the grand scheme of things.
Manager: Neil Harris Millllllllllllllllllllllllllll.
Opposition Profile: Lucas Ball @LocasBall2211 "Until Neil Harris came back in, last season was tough. Gary Rowett should have left after the Blackburn game at the end of 2022/23 where we inexplicably threw away a play-off spot and the opening games were tough to watch, turgid and showed why a change was needed. Joe Edwards came in, looking like an exciting appointment, in the mould of the Kieran McKenna’s and a few other success stories but unfortunately this one didn’t work out. The stylistic change was too much for a mid-season appointment and apparently he didn’t get on too well with some players, though I feel sorry for him in that I feel he may have done better if appointed in the summer with a full pre-season behind him.
"Our form when Harris came in was only matched by Premier League-bound Ipswich, as he brought that Millwall spirit back and re-connected the team with the fans once more. It was a great end to the season in terms of results though we still often failed to create big chances. When he came back, I assumed the deal would only be until the end of 2023/24 but it runs until the end of this season, for now. Any extension will hinge hugely on how this campaign goes, of course, and I’m still not sure he is the right long-term choice. He has re-instilled that spirit and grittiness about us, but is that enough in the Championship anymore? Our form was great at the end of the season, of course, but performances were still open to criticism and results largely based on a strong defensive backbone.
"I think the signings made are really good. Jensen obviously comes in, in extremely sad circumstances following Matija Sarkic’s passing (Rest in Peace, Mati) and Liam Roberts looks a decent back-up to him with Connal Truman completing the senior goalkeeping ranks. Japhet Tanganga was incredible on loan and is one of the best defenders in the division, so will hope to continue that and his strong relationships with the likes of Ryan Leonard and Jake Cooper in the back. Joe Bryan will be like another new signing at the back having spent a lot of time out injured last season and adds real quality from the left. Shaun Hutchinson returning is a solid cover option, too, at the back.
"Macaulay Langstaff’s Millwall career will hinge a lot on what happens with our midfield or wide additions. We don’t create enough currently and he is a striker who thrives on good service into the box - but if we can add a creative midfielder or winger/versatile forward, it could solve some of those issues. The squad looks a little bare in places & there’s also a couple of players who could easily move on, Wes Harding springs to mind as the first possibility having already had interest from Wrexham in this window while Zian Flemming’s agent was pushing for a move. Hopefully Ryan Longman’s return can be secured.
"I think it’ll be a season of mid-table obscurity. Harris will make sure we pick up plenty of points at home and we’ll be strong enough defensively to nick odd results away from home. I don’t think we’ll be right in the relegation mix nor strong enough to push for the top-six, certainly not without more additions. The league looks very open again though, and it’s perhaps the toughest league in the world to predict.”
Prediction: 17th It’s going to be a tough season at The Den on many levels. League table wise I think they’ll just about be okay.
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