This Season: Cue much gnashing, wailing, looting of shops, burning of parked cars, from a support base big on numbers and short on sense of perspective. Sporting director Kristjaan Speakman has become a particular source of ire. Spending 130 days looking for a new manager – Still doesn’t want to come lads, give it up, it’s getting embarrassing – and at one point looking strongly like they were going to settle on Frank Lampard has not done much to quell this unrest. Go get the bed sheet and the poster paint.

Sunderland won two of their final 15 matches. Having attempted to go through all of last season without a striker, as it stands today they’re all set to try that again. The development of 18-year-old Jobe Bellingham is being hindered by the constant shunting of him into various makeshift forward roles. Most of their summer recruitment efforts have been concentrated on shuffling myriad mediocre goalkeepers around.

Their new manager, eventually, is Kitchen Nightmares bit part character and 37th choice for the job Regis Le Bris, fresh from finishing dead last with Leyton Orient’s more garlicky and exotic cousin Lorient in the French league.

This would all, usually, be a recipe for a LFW Season Preview relegation prediction.

Let’s take a breath. Sunderland were such a chaotic mess when they went out of this league Netflix produced a two-season sitcom on them. On the riverrrrrrr where we used to build t’boooooaaaaats – and dad wor saaaaad. The rebuild from such a farcical low point was substantial, and they spent four years in the division below. Since then, they’ve won a promotion, reached the play-offs, and finished in mid-table in the Championship. Three years ago if you’d offered a Mackem that they’d definitely have gone for it. They’ve achieved that despite the manager they thought they were going to build the whole thing around walking out.

The play-off qualification was an over-achievement, driven by some outstanding loan signings they were never going to be able to keep, and shouldn’t have raised expectations as much as it did. The club was perhaps a little idealistic/naïve/bloody daft to think you could take the experience out of that side altogether (Batth, Evans, Pritchard etc) and double down and down again on an admirable business model of bringing in teens from Europe and Premier League academies to develop. That has, however, had the effect of getting a whole tonne of Championship experience into the likes of Chris Rigg, Bellingham and Dan Neil which they will be better for this season. The astute signing of Alan Browne from Preston also suggests some new-found pragmatism, and a recognition greater flexibility in The Plan was probably required.

Angelic shithouse Luke O’Nien remains, biting people’s legs, doing 500 keep ups with a tennis ball and that sort of thing.

Sure, hiring Le Bris straight after a relegation all feels a bit Alain Perrin at Portsmouth or Remi Garde at Aston Villa, but he’d previously taken Lorient them to tenth in the top flight and has a good development record before his best players were all sold out from under him.

Ian Poveda was the best player on the pitch when we faced Sheff Wed last season, and if he can stay fit that’s an astute pick up. If Jack Clarke sticks around that’s a hell of a duo to stretch teams widthways across the field.

It’ll all be for nought if they don’t add at least one striker of some sort but, I don’t know, this might not be the complete disaster you might be thinking.

Manager – Regis Le Bris Ah René, such an eye for detail.

Opposition View - @WhatTheFalkPod “We came into the season off the back of an unexpected play-off push. It was kind of weird that we’d lost in the semi-final to Luton, didn’t get promoted, didn’t get to Wembley, but everybody was in quite a good mood and optimistic because we’d almost gone back-to-back. Obviously, Ross Stewart was no longer there and Diallo didn’t come back but was the really good nucleus of a young team with players like Pritchard and Gooch who’d been there and done it. I wouldn’t say we went in with high expectations, but we were hopeful we could get, if not a play-off push again, then top eight.

“You get a couple more bodies, sign that striker, keep Jack Clarke - I don’t think we will, to be honest, but if you do and Patrick Roberts performs the way he used to… there’s no reason it can’t go well, we know what this league is like. At the minute I think about 10th makes about sense for me.”

Prediction: 11th Wouldn’t put it past them to drive this manager out in five minutes and have another meltdown, mind.

Hull City 25/1

Last Season: Finally free of the malignant Allam ownership, Hull City have been rebuilding towards a brighter future under Turkish owner Acun Ilicali and his Acun Medya conglomerate. Nevertheless, when we sat down to write them up this time last year they’d only signed four players, and one of those – Liam Delap – was coming off the back of poor spells at Stoke and Preston. We stuck them 15th and described them as “the hardest call on the coupon”, while other previews said play-offs and some even said relegation.

No sooner had the copy been filed than Hull stormed out and started splashing the cash. Jaden Philogene for £5m from Villa, and Posh Scott Twine on loan from Burnley, were part of an intake which would eventually stretch to 16 new faces, including Liverpool’s Fabio Carvalho and Burnley’s Anass Zaroury. In the end they finished seventh which made them, along with Sunderland, one of our biggest miss predictions.

Seventh in the Championship represented significant progress after finishes of 18th, 13th, 24th, 19th and 15th in this league either side of a stint in the one below. Still, it wasn’t enough to keep Liam Rosenior in his job come May.

Within the city, and clearly the boardroom, there was frustration at a series of staid home draws through the spring which eventually cost the Tigers a spot in the six. Five wins from six through February, four of them away culminating in a victory at promoted Southampton, positioned them handily, but they won none of the next six and West Brom, Birmingham, Middlesbrough and Leicester all took points on Humberside. The chairman said he simply didn’t like watching his own team play. Ooof.

Outwardly, the treatment of Rosenior is seen as harsh. He’s walked straight into another job at Strasbourg and, as a fan of his, I probably err more on the side of stick rather than twist in this instance. They were two results away from the play-offs and played the whole second half of the season without Delap or Aaron Connolly because of injury. But when we played Hull last Easter they had a midfield of Jean Seri (58 Ivory Coast caps) and Ozan Tufan (65 Turkish caps) flanked by Carvalho and Philogene. When you see the way they absolutely destroyed Marti Cifuentes’ team that day, declaring at 3-0, you could understand the frustration that the handbrake had been left on them to such an extent that they wouldn’t even make the play-offs – particularly when you look at what Carlos Corberan was able to do with a far inferior West Brom team.

Ins >>> Ryan Giles, 24, LB, Luton, £5m >>> Cody Drameh, 22, RB, Leeds, Free >>> Marvin Mehlem, 26, AM, Darmstadt, Undisclosed

Outs >>> Jacob Greaves, 23, CB, Ipswich, £18m >>> Jaden Philogene, 22, LW, Villa, £14m >>> Ozan Tufan, 29, CM, Trabzonspor, £2m >>> Ryan Allsop, 32, GK, Birmingham, £500k >>> Jason Lokilo, 25, RW, CSKA Sofia, £300k >>> Adama Traore, 29, AM, Amed SK (Turkey), Free >>> Ryan Woods, 30, CM, Exeter, Free >>> Greg Docherty, 27, CM, Charlton, Free >>> Billy Sharp, 38, CF, Doncaster, Free >>> Matt Ingram, 30, GK, Oxford, Free >>> James Furlong, 22, LB, Wimbledon, Loan >>> Callum Jones, 23, CM, Morecambe, Loan >>> Aaron Connolly, 24, CF, Released >>> Cyrus Christie, 31, RB, Released >>> Vaughn Covil, 20, RW, Released >>> David Robson, 22, GK, Released

This Season: It’s clear now, if it wasn’t before, that Acun Ilicali has not bought into Hull City to watch them play league fixtures with Oxford and Plymouth. He’s here for the Premier League, he’s here to win. He’s willing to spend to get there, and - as anybody unfortunate enough to be sitting near the visiting entourage in the posh seats at Loftus Road for our 2-0 win in December will testify – doesn’t like losing one little bit.

Frustration with Rosenior’s perceived over-caution has sent them looking for his polar opposite in German Tim Walter – a sort of footballing Captain Zapp Brannigan.

Now, this has the potential to be a lot of fun. The most striking statistic from his managerial career so far is the goals for. At Bayern Munich’s seconds they bagged 84 in his 36 games in charge (2.33 a game), 65 in 37 at Holstein (1.7), 33 in 20 at Stuttgart (1.65) and a fairly ridiculous 202 in 104 at Hamburg (1.9). This is going to be quite a high press like Mount Everest is a high hill. Described as “heart attack football”, he recently returned from a successful carpet bombing of the Pacifists of the Gandhi Nebula, to talk to The I and say: “There are no secrets. I am open like a book because I know that what I do, nobody else in the world does it. Nobody can copy it. I don’t have a big influence, it’s all myself, it’s my style, it doesn’t matter if other people don’t like it.”

It also has the potential to be combustible and short-lived. For all their mad goalscoring antics in Bundesliga 2, Hamburg repeatedly came up one place short of promotion in each of his seasons in charge there – much like Hull did last season. Rosenior’s stubbornness and unwillingness to change was cited as one of his biggest issues, particularly his persistent selection of Ryan Allsop in goal because he could pass even though he couldn’t actually keep goal. But the feedback on Walter from Germany frequently comes back to him being stubbornly wedded to his all-out attack principles at the expense of ropey defence – all four of his teams average more than a goal a game against as well, Hamburg conceded 141 in 104 games even while finishing third, third and fourth. “Combative, doesn’t learn from mistakes, defensively suspect…” it all sounds a little bit Warbs Warburton circa 2019/20.

Is he going to butt heads with this owner? And are the same Hull fans who got on Rosenior’s back for being too passive last year going to be talking about the need for a bit more defensive steel when they draw 3-3 after leading 3-0, or lose a game 4-3 they were winning 3-2 in the 88th minute? There can be an element of Goldilocks thinking to football supporters in these situations – this one’s too defensive, this one’s too attacking.

Short term, their problems are more logistical than philosophical. Hull scored 68 goals in the Championship last season and, as it stands, 63 of those are no longer there. Joining them through the exit door is impressive centre back Jacob Greaves, who’s been picked off by the sharp operation currently being run at Ipswich Town. They are enormously weaker, all over the park, than they were in May. Attempts to bolster the attack with Kieffer Moore and Brandon Thomas Asante have, rather weirdly, both fallen over at the eleventh hour even though the players were at the stadium in Hull to sign their deals. One of those is unlucky, Moore did the same thing to QPR when he signed for Cardiff from Wigan, but twice in two weeks is a bit yellow warning light. Likewise, being forced to complete a £4m+ signing of Ryan Giles when you’ve apparently already decided you don’t want him. They’re trying to shuffle him straight off back to Middlesbrough apparently.

Rosenior was good at attracting players here to play for him. Now the opposite seems to happen. There's talk Walter is already unhappy that promised signings have not materialised. Oh boy.

In the plus column, Oscar Estupinan, who had shown himself a reasonable goalscorer at this level but wasn’t rated by Rosenior, is back from his season-long loan, as is Ryan Longman who I’ve always felt very underrated. I absolutely adored young keeper Thimothee Lo-Tutala in Doncaster’s remarkable push for promotion last year. Give him a go you cowards.

This season, and indeed this club, feels like it goes one of two ways. We’ve seen owners like this come in and carry clubs like Wolves, Bournemouth and Leicester off into the promised land. We’ve also seen, at Derby and Sheff Wed, what happens when money is spent and promotion isn’t achieved. There’s a huge amount of work to do on this squad over the next month to get it into a promotable state.

Manager: Tim Walter Now, here’s a course with some chest hair.

Opposition View: @NathanielWhitto “Last season we made real progress with a young manager who was still learning but had implemented a clear style of play, could attract high quality players because of that style and achieved an amazing away form to get us to our highest position in the 92 since 2017. All of that out of the window now.

“I really hope Acun, the owner, does stick with Walter. Well, unless it's a trainwreck. Consistently getting teams to high positions in Germany and with a more aggressive system than Rosenior he could be a real success. If he resigned tomorrow I wouldn't blame him. At this time he has not got close to the squad he was promised. As it stands a playoff chase is off the table. With a few more recruits midtable would be realistic. At that point it would seriously test whether our owner believes this is going to be a long time process to get to the Premier League or if he will stick with a manager and slowly build up to it. I predicted 11th last season and I'll do the same. Though come September 1 it might be higher. We just don't know who we will have signed by then.”

Prediction: 7th Probably our most illogical and nonsensical call. Perhaps they’ll screw me the other way around this time, but I got burned by this lot last year and I just don’t think there’s any way this squad looks anything like this in a month.

Sheff Wed 25/1

Last Season: “You want hope and optimism for QPR this season? Here it is.” Or, so we said in tipping Sheff Wed for dead last in the 23/24 Championship. I guess it was inevitable we’d contrive to lose both matches against them after that.

In fairness, we had it spot on initially. Derek Chansiri’s latest chaotic summer, in which Darren Moore departed after winning promotion and a squad was put together without anybody apparently overseeing recruitment (Ashley Fletcher turned up and scored zero goals in 28 appearances, of course, football’s hardest working agent), led into a season which began with Xisco Munoz in charge. He was fun, I liked him. To be fair it felt like Brian Clough might have had a tough time getting a tune out of the ageing squad he’d inherited and the shambolic summer of recruitment that went in to strengthening it. They won none of their first 13 league games and were eliminated from the League Cup by Mansfield. Derek, when he wasn’t cranking up the ticket prices (cash only), took to responding personally to individual fan emails with illuminating observations such as “you very thick”. There’s a kids backpack in the club shop here for £55.

There then followed little short of a Championship footballing miracle. Seven points adrift and without a win in ten, Derek not only identified a brilliant young coaching talent in Danny Rohl but also persuaded him to leave behind a career that had already led him through RB Leipzig, Bayern Munich, Southampton and the German national team and take a swing at one of British football’s biggest basket cases. Things started to recover – the elusive first win soon secured at home to Rotherham. They won four of seven through December, but the perils of their situation were clear in the QPR bit of that. With two minutes left QPR led 1-0 and at that stage would have moved ten points clear of Wednesday; the Owls scored twice in stoppage time for a win and six point swing. Time was not on their side. Every slip could be crucial. Four games without a win through January, culminating in a 4-0 loss at Huddersfield, gave the strong impression of a bridge too far.

Back they came again, five wins in six, crucially beating fellow strugglers Birmingham, Plymouth, Rotherham and Millwall within that. They looked ropey as hell to me at Loftus Road, but won another six pointer 2-0, and finished the campaign with three straight victories to stay up.

Remarkable.

Ins >>> Olaf Kobacki, 22, LW, Arka Gdynia (Poland), £500k >>> Yan Valery, 24, RB, Angers, £350k >>> Max Lowe, 27, LB, Sheff Utd, Free >>> Jamal Lowe, 29, CF, Bournemouth, Free >>> Nathaniel Chalobah, 29, CM, West Brom, Free >>> Svante Ingelsson, 26, AM, Hansa Rostock, Free >>> Ben Hamer, 36, GK, Watford, Free >>> Charlie McNeill, 20, CF, Man Utd, Free >>> James Beadle, 19, GK, Brighton, Loan

Outs >>> Will Vaulks, 30, DM, Oxford, Free >>> Juan Delgado, 31, RW, CD Everton (Chile), Free >>> Cameron Dawson, 28, GK, Rotherham, Free >>> Tyreeq Bakinson, 25, CM, Wycombe, Free >>> George Byers, 28, CM, Port Vale, Free >>> Reece James, 30, LB, Rotherham, Free >>> Lee Gregory, 35, CF, Mansfield, Free >>> Ciaran Brennan, 24, CB, Newport, Free

This Season: There is, for the first time in a long time, a lot of love in the pre-season air for Sheff Wed. An absolute world away from 12 months ago when they were universally tipped to finish last.

The reason is clear: Danny Rohl shunning multiple links to other clubs by signing a new thee-year deal at Hillsborough – almost as eyebrow raising as him turning up here in the first place. The 35-year-old dreamboat can do no wrong in these parts and seems to be relishing the opportunity to write the theme tune and sing the theme tune at a club so bereft of structure he was doing the hotel bookings for his team last season on top of everything else.

With nine signings made already, they’re certainly not hanging around. A conscious effort seems to being made to drag a notoriously high average age of this squad down, aiding Rohl’s preference for a mega high press game. Discounting journeyman reserve goalkeeper Ben Hamer, all the new boys are under 30.

Child goalkeeper James Beadle, built like a butcher’s apprentice, eight clean sheets through the back half of last season, is back from Brighton. There’s been desperately needed surgery in both full back positions with Max Lowe and Yan Valery. They announced the capture of Nathaniel Chalobah during the England v Holland match, and I’d probably want to hide that one too, but their outstanding centre back Di’shon Bernard has signed a new deal which is a huge boost. Olaf Kobacki scored 14 goals from left wing in the Polish second tier last term.

There’s work to be done in central midfield, where Will Vaulks was among eight summer departures and talismanic Barry Bannan made 44 starts last season but is turning 35 in December, and up front, where Man Utd youngster Charlie McNeill is a worthwhile punt and former QPR loanee Jamal Lowe is a bit meh. They’d like Ike Ugbo back, but Sunderland are similarly desperate for a centre forward and are driving the price up.

These are all minor problems, though, compared to the very obvious elephant in the boardroom. Having Derek Chansiri as your chairman is like setting up your family home at the foot of a volcano that has a very recent prolific history of spewing liquified human shit into the air. One minute you’re having a nice time out in the garden, the next second the sky blackens and the bane of your existence hurls another load of Julia Hartley-Brewer broadcast your way. You can never fully relax, you can never truly switch off, with this guy around.

Sheff Wed have had four dramatic, tumultuous seasons in a row. They were relegated dead last amidst financial collapse and points deductions in 2020/21. They lost a play-off semi-final to Sunderland in 2021/22 with the very last kick of the second leg on their own patch. They recovered from a four goal deficit in the semi-final of their 2023 play-off with Peterborough with an equaliser in the 96th minute and then won the final in the last second of extra-time. Last season we know all about. What the club needs now is steady, calm, considered progress. The signs so far are they’ve accidentally stumbled upon the perfect manager to lead that. I’d ordinarily say never go with ‘what manager wants manager gets’, because it doesn’t work in modern football, but when your club is as shambolic as Sheffield Wednesday and your manager is as good as Danny Rohl I’d probably make an exception. They were in top half form throughout the second half of last season and could easily achieve that again with additions in the middle of midfield and up front. With Sheff Utd in a bit of a state there could even be a changing of the guard in the Steel City which would go down very well in these parts.

But…

How do you know Derek’s not going to sack him? How do you know Rohl, now in a position of immense power here, isn’t going to start getting publicly uppity in the last week of the transfer window if he doesn’t get the players he wants, and Chansiri pulls the trigger? How do you know he’s not sitting at home stewing that he’s not the cleverest and most important person in Hillsborough anymore? Rohl’s getting all the credit, you think he likes that? Think it sounds far fetched? You haven’t been paying attention to this guy.

The success or failure of this season in S6 will depend on one thing – who’s steering the boat? Potentially the division’s best manager? Or Little Lord Cuntleroy upstairs?

Manager: Danny Rohl More hair today than I’ve grown cumulatively in my entire life.

Opposition View: Lovely Jon @j_ho9 “I know you had us dead last in your predictions last season and that was, to be fair to you, a completely fair assessment. We were a bit of a shambles. We’d obviously had the whole Darren Moore saga, we didn’t start our recruitment until late, and when we did start it wasn’t the greatest. We got off to an awful start and thankfully Chansiri made the decision to pull the plug on Xisco fairly quickly. That started the Danny Rohl chapter and things have turned around incredibly since then – albeit with some ups and downs along the way and some absolutely horrific games still thrown in there.

“If we keep Rohl for another season, and he has signed a new deal, then I think top half for us. Depending on what sort of business we do in the rest of the window we’ll see how far and high we can push. But, for now, something like tenth.”

Prediction: 12th Danny v Derek, winner moves the league table needle half a dozen places in each direction.

Bristol City 33/1 (title odds)

Last Season: With big money received for the likes of Aden Flint, Adam Webster, Bobby Reid, Joe Bryan and Jonathan Kodjia, Bristol City had become one of the Championship’s most adept selling clubs. Emboldened by that, they started lashing out fairly stupid contracts on the likes of Nahki Wells to chase a Premier League dream that looked closest under Lee Johnson’s reign – Man Utd were eliminated from a League Cup quarter final and they made a reasonable fist of Man City in the semis. This did mean, however, they were ripe for a fall when Covid hit. Committed to lucrative deals as revenues disappeared, they were no longer able to command big fees for players with the bottom falling out of the transfer market. Having brought in north of £60m in player sales from 2017 to 2020, they brought in barely a penny over the next two-and a half-years.

Heavy financial losses and FFP issues were the inevitable consequence and an experienced manager was sought to stabilise, rebuild the team and essentially make sure a problematic situation didn’t turn into a complete meltdown back into League One. In that endeavour Nigel Pearson proved something of an ideal candidate. Bristol City have remained a steady lower mid-table presence, their finances have been soothed if not solved, and young players like Antoine Semenyo and the supremely talented Alex Scott have been brought through, developed, and sold to get that cash flow wheel spinning again. Popular with players, staff and fans, it was therefore something of a surprise to see Pearson invited to retire back to his ostrich sanctuary midway through last season.

Unlike QPR during their banter years, Bristol City did at least have some infrastructure to show for their spend. They have one of the Championship’s best new training grounds, and a highly productive academy to go with it. Ashton Gate has been stylishly converted into one of the division’s best grounds, showing you’re always better staying in your spiritual home and working with it than moving out to play in a bowl like everybody else’s out near The Big Tesco. With the work Pearson has done on the team this means a terrific platform has been laid for whoever came next, rather than the usual chaos you inherit when you take a club over mid-season.

Top trendy Liam Manning is the lucky recipient of that inheritance, walking away from Oxford six months into the job there to take up the opportunity.

Results under him so far can probably best be summed up by Valentine’s Week, where they ended Southampton’s club record unbeaten run with a thoroughly deserved, thumping 3-1 win at the Gate on the Tuesday night, leaving QPR facing a daunting ‘away fatigued’ game three of a three game week there on the Saturday – Rangers won, 1-0, with a goal from Ilias Chair. City knocked West Ham out of the cup, then didn’t win again for five games. They lost four in a row, then won four of their next six.

Theirs was a team to avoid on your coupon through the second half of last season, and it finished with them winning five of nine and going seven unbeaten only to then lose 4-0 at Stoke (Stoke!!) on the final day.

Ins >>> Fally Mayulu, 21, CF, Rapid Vienna, £3m >>> Sinclair Armstrong, 21, CF, QPR, £2.5m >>> Yu Hirakawa, 23, RW, Machida Zelvia (Japan), Loan

Outs >>> Andreas Weimann, 32, AM, Blackburn, Free >>> Harvey Wiles-Richards, 22, GK, Bath City, Free >>> Jamie Knight-Lebel, 19, CB, Crewe, Loan >>> Ephraim Yeboah, 17, CF, Doncaster, Loan >>> Matty James, 32, CM, Released >>> Andy King, 35, CM, Released >>> Duncan Idehen, 21, CB, Released

This Season: The Championship has a stodgy collection of clubs for whom this division, and the lower midtable reaches of it, have been home for too long: QPR (12th, 18th, 16th, 19th, 13th, 9th, 11th, 20th, 18th); Cardiff (8th, 18th, 21st, 12th); Preston (11th, 11th, 7th, 14th, 9th, 13th, 13th, 12th); Bristol City (18th, 17th, 11th, 8th, 12th, 19th, 17th, 14th, 11th). All of these clubs aspire to be play-off teams but, as Birmingham showed last season, you’re only the odd misstep away from turning 19th, 19th, 17th, 20th, 18th, 20th and 17th into… 22nd and we’re all off to Stockport on the train.

Given Pearson was ushered on to try and ignite a push for the play-offs, it would seem the Robins’ ambition stretches as far as a certain amount of pressure on Liam Manning to start achieving that reasonably lively. As we say, all the infrastructure is in place, and there have been hefty recent player sales to help finance some finessing of a decent squad of players. Some of the coagulant Pearson used to stem the bleed here – Andy King, Matty James, Andy Weimann - has also ‘gone to live on a farm’.

The team is ridiculously well stocked at centre back where the rehabilitation of Rob Dickie continues apace alongside fellow Oxford prospect Rob Atkinson, former Luton favourite Kal Naismith, local dependable Zak Vyner and Brighton prospect Haydon Roberts. Only West Brom, Leicester and Leeds conceded fewer than City’s 51 last year – Ipswich went up shipping 57.

Picking Max Bird and Jason Knight out of the smouldering remains of Derby looked like smart business to me in midfield. Posh Scott Twine looks set for a reunion with Manning and could really elevate this lot.

Where other clubs struggle with squad depth, City continuously produce academy players capable of stepping up. QPR fans very grateful Sam Bell pulled his hamstring 20 minutes into torturing Jimmy Dunne at Ashton Gate last season, a real sliding doors moment in QPR’s survival bid and Dunne’s conversion to full back.

So, plenty to be optimistic about here if you want to tip them – and, let’s be honest, we tip Bristol City every year, don’t we?

There are two problems as I see it. The first, much like QPR, Sheff Wed, and indeed half the division, is that the growing list of positives is handicapped severely by the lack of goal power in the team. City did have the division’s fourth best defence last year, and yet could only finish eleventh. Needless to say, everybody above them scored more (Ipswich almost twice as many), and five of the teams below them did too, including fourth bottom Plymouth. The imminent departure of Tommy Conway, who’s refused to sign a new contract, will bring money, but not help with this. Little surprise the financial outlay so far this summer has been exclusively on strikers – Frenchman Fally Mayulu who has cost £3m from Rapid Vienna, and our own Sinclair Armstrong for £2.5m with a further £1m in potential add ons.

Both regular readers will know I’m a bigger fan of Sinclair Armstrong than many. His raw pace and power attributes we know all about and can make him a very exciting player at this level. Bristol City are one of the division’s hotter teams ‘on the transition’ (puke) and Armstrong can be very dangerous in those situations. Sure, his finishing is amateur hour, he can’t trap a dead rat, and when given time to think about what he’s doing his composure is so lacking it’s a wonder he hasn’t killed somebody. But finishing and first touch are coachable skills – Harry Kane living proof. He’s been unlucky to come through at QPR at the point in time he did – team so desperate we couldn’t give him the Chair/Eze loan treatment in the lower divisions, five different managers in rapid succession (two of whom loved him, two of whom weren’t having him at all, and one who was ambivalent). City have certainly overpaid, in transfer fee and wage, for what they’ve got at the moment, but I’d be excited about this one if I was them. The Tweet that said if you told me Sinclair Armstrong was playing Champions League football in five years I’d believe you, and if you told me Sinclair Armstrong was playing Conference South in five years I’d also believe you, had it bang on.

The other issue is Manning himself. Since football collectively decided there was a correct and incorrect way to play the sport, managers like this have been in high demand – Ipswich academy, West Ham academy, MK Dons, Oxford, pass, pass, pass. Manning could well have been the QPR manager before they got taken in by the snake oil salesman. But Manning wasn’t promoted at MK Dons, and lost his job with them on the way to relegation – albeit after Troy Parrott and Scott Twine had been removed from the side without replacement. He didn’t stay at Oxford long enough to see through a season, and his City team was wildly inconsistent. He is consistently hobbled by opponents playing in a ‘low block’ (puke, again). Personally I find some of these coaches a bit ‘emperors new clothes’, and the football they play every bit as tedious as an afternoon watching Tony Pulis playing wheeled cannon football yawping “GO ON JON” at Jon Walters.

As said, Pearson wasn’t removed because they’re happy with midtable in these parts. City expects.

Manager - Liam Manning Low block = kryptonite.

Opposition view: @FevsFootball “Feels like déjà vu writing this, because it’s pretty much the same mixed bag from mid-table Bristol City every time. Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V, Find and Replace the names.

“With the season a week away and the end of the transfer window four weeks away there are too many unknowns. I still think of City as a middle-eight team, where we finish from 9th-16th is anybody’s guess and likely to be a difference of two or three results, ultimately. I’ll plump for another 11th place finish.”

Prediction: 9th Remember, though, we overtip this lot every year.

Swansea 33/1

Last Season: Although we were only a few positions out with our prediction for Swansea (10th v 14th) one of our worst calls was thinking Michael Duff would kick this lot on to another level. Taking the base laid by Russell Martin, we expected Duff to beat out the soft underbelly and ‘process and ideals over results’ that sometimes hampered the Swans and turn them into a top ten side. It quickly became apparent it wasn’t a good fit at all. They didn’t like him, he didn’t like them, even a little flurry of four consecutive wins through September couldn’t alter the mood music in South Wales.

The Swans basically spent the whole season casting envious glances at the increasingly frantic relegation whirlpool, as it dragged more and more Birmingham, Stoke and Millwall types towards it, threatening to jump right on in there and start splashing around in the sewage discharge, but always picking up the odd result here and there to stay clear. They won none of their first seven, and there were two other separate spells of five without a victory – 17 games across three runs, and never in serious relegation trouble. They lost 19 times, same as second bottom Huddersfield. That’s quite a trick to pull off. What have we learned from Blackburn, kids? Draws are not your friend. They had six fewer of those than the Terriers.

The appointment of Luke Williams from Notts County feels like a much better fit. Swansea blab on about ‘The Swansea Way’ almost as much as Uncle Albert talks about the war, but they are a strange club that has grown up on a unique diet. Raised out of the ashes by the likes of Roberto Martinez and Brenton Rodgers, this is a support base that actually likes it when Russell Martin has the goalkeeper trying to complete one-twos in his own six yard box, when most of the rest of the league’s home and awayers would be giving it the big “gerrit forward”. Williams coached here before, under Steve Cooper when they made the play-off final, and then followed Martin from MK Dons back to Swansea. This is already his third spell here, he gets it.

There was enough in a reasonably decent end – six wins and three draws from 13, Stoke beaten 3-0, a 4-0 awayer at Huddersfield – to suggest he’s the man for this job.

Ins >>> Goncalo Franco, 23, CM, Moreirense, £2m >>> Ji-sung Eom, 22, LW, Gwangju FC, £1m >>> Zan Viptonik, 22, CF, Bordeaux, Free >>> Lawrence Vigouroux, 30, GK, Burnley, Undisclosed

Outs >>> Nathan Wood, 23, CB, Southampton, £3m >>> Przemyslaw Placheta, 26, LW, Oxford, Free >>> Nathanael Ogbeta, 23, LB, Plymouth, Free >>> Jerry Yates, 27, CF, Derby, Loan >>> Mykola Kukharevych, 23, CF, Hibs, Loan >>> Cameron Congreave, 20, CM, Bromley, Loan >>> Liam Walsh, 26, CM, Released

This Season: Williams is the main positive here, and right down the spine of the team there are Martin leftovers who suit the way he wants to play perfectly – Darling, Grimes, Cooper. The latter has had a really tough time after showing early potential, and scored only once last year (at Plymouth). He was sent off late in a draw at Loftus Road.

Williams prioritised width in the attack after taking over, and Ronald (like the Portuguese prima donna, not the fast-food clown) looks a great pick up. Their incessant switching, stretching and crossing saw Marti Cifuentes drop Kenneth Paal, recall Morgan Fox and play four centre halves across his defence for a hard fought 1-0 win there on Easter Monday. The £1m summer pick up of South Korean left winger Ji-Sung Eom suggests there’s more of that to come. They’ll be supplying Zan Vipotnik, a very smart pick out of the smouldering wreckage of Bordeaux and the next potential Joel Piroe in these parts.

There are, however, substantial negatives here. Hugh Jenkins, the man who rebuilt the club, is now at Newport County. In his stead are detached, absent, clueless American owners, with an obscure management structure and dire recruitment operation.

Everywhere you look here there are disasters. They let Morgan Whittaker go to Plymouth for £1m last summer, and spent twice that on Jerry Yates. Nine goals in 46 later, he now plays for Derby. They rebuffed a bid reputedly getting on towards the extreme from Southampton for star centre back Nathan Wood. This allowed him to run his contract down to a nub, through a season in which he was mostly injured. Now they’ve had to sell him to Saints for £3m, and Middlesbrough get 40% of that. Dumb as rocks. They spent £2m on Ukrainian striker Mykola Kukharevych, and then promptly fell out with him. He’s yet to start a game and is now on loan at Hibs. They signed Kristian Pedersen on deadline day, started him three times, then loaned him to Sheff Wed. I reckon you could do a better recruitment job than this having a monkey leaf through an old Panini sticker book.

Their best player last season was arguably Brighton goalkeeper Carl Rushworth, who was absolutely outstanding and will be one to watch. If they try and replace him with Andy Fisher, one of Martin’s more ridiculous projects, they’ll go down. Maverick Lawrence Vigouroux is a late pick up from Burnley in that position.

Daft owners, lousy recruitment, poor forwards, suspect goalkeepers, years of decline… they tick a lot of boxes. It wouldn’t take too much for a serious problem to manifest here. But Luke Williams is a great fit here and, in a weak league, with further new arrivals to come, they might just about be ok.

Manager – Luke Williams Let me sit down and tell you about where I get all my great ideas.

Opposition View: @SwansNews “Last season was dreadful. The football was dull, the transfer activity was as bad as we have possibly ever seen and the fact that we even thought about recruiting Michael Duff let alone appointing him tells you much about the knowledge of those who were making the decisions. There were some bright spots but they were few and far between.

“I think we’ll be midtable. Probably looking more upwards this season though so that’s progression.”

Prediction: 14th That Vipotnik pick up has just soothed my worries about this lot a tad.

Watford 40/1

Last Season: Four goals to the good by half time, Watford could easily have started last season with a double figures victory against QPR had they not sportingly taken their foot off Rangers’ throat after half time. Gareth Ainsworth said he thought the Hornets might be champions. In the end they won only five more home games (only Rotherham won fewer on their own patch than Watford) and finished 15th, their lowest league position since 2009/10.

Watford, infamously, started 2022/23 with Rob Edwards in charge having gone to great trouble and strife to prise him away from unwilling sellers Forest Green. They spent all summer promising it would be different this time, the manager would be supported more, he would be given time, there would be patience. They sacked Edwards so early into that nonsense he was able to walk across the M1 to bitter rivals Luton and get them promoted to the top flight instead. Watford rattled through Slaven Bilic and Chis Wilder while Edwards prepared for league games with Arsenal and Liverpool. Serves them right.

Suitably humbled, they promised solemnly that things had changed and Valerian Ismael was definitely the man for the job. Honestly, it’s like Eastenders this – there’s been fewer blokes through Sharon Watts than there has the manager’s office at Vicarage Road.

Ismael impressed on these shores as Barnsley manager, taking an unfancied newly promoted team off towards the play-offs. But he did so in a very specific set of circumstances. This was the Covid year, with no fans in grounds, so Barnsley, who would usually struggle to post points on the road in this division, were playing in neutral grounds. It was also the first year we introduced the ridiculously excessive five substitutions in a game – in case, I don’t know, you got Covid by sitting on the bench too long? Don’t look at me I wasn’t the one going round spraying the crossbar with disinfectant at half time. Ismael condensed the field with a goalkeeper playing sweeper and three strikers charging around in deep areas knowing he could replace all three of them on the hour and still have two subs left to play with. Since football, and life, returned to whatever new normal this is, he’s been less than successful at West Brom and Besiktas.

When that opening day rampage melted away into one win from the next 11 and a League Cup exit at Stevenage, everybody waited for the inevitable. Watford haven’t had 14 managers in 14 years for no reason, he’d be getting the sack. GET ME QUIQUE SANCHEZ FLORES. Go on, sack him. He wants you to sack him, go on. Give him a little sack. Go on, you know you want to. Instead, a new contract. Ahaha he says, I’ve caught a geezer peeping. Chinny reckon. All this achieved was they had to pay Ismael more money when, lo and behold, they won one of 12 through the spring and sacked him anyway.

In came Tom Cleverley, because it was his turn. I think it’s me next, then probably you. He drew six of his last 11 games in a thrilling finale.

Ins: >>> Rocco Vata, 19, AM, Celtic, £150k >>> Moussa Sissoko, 34, CM, Nantes, Free >>> Mamadou Doumbia, 18, CF, Black Stars, Undisclosed >>> Yasser Larouci, 23, LB, Troyes, Loan >>> Antonio Tikvic, 20, CB, Udinese, Loan (of course) >>> Jonathan Bond, 31, GK, Unattached, Free

Outs >>> Ismael Kone, 22, CM, Marseille, £10m >>> Ashley Fletcher, 28, CF, Blackpool, Free >>> Ben Hamer, 36, GK, Sheff Wed, Free >>> Jake Livermore, 34, DM, Released

This Season: Things are getting all weird at Watford.

Now into a third season outside the Premier League, parachute payments do, indeed, decline sharply from here. But this club had been in the top flight for six of the previous seven years. In the last four seasons they’ve banked north of £200m in player sales while spending only £20m. FFP has never applied here anyway because of the arrangement they have with Udinese where players are “sold” and loaned between the two at a rate of 68 in a decade (57 of them a loan or undisclosed fee) and the money just gets past from Gino Pozzo’s right hand to his left hand. Already this summer Ismael Kone has gone to Marseille for £10m, and Yasser Asprilla will shortly join him through the exit door for at least double that – Leicester have gazumped Rennes at the last minute, apparently.

And, yet, the Hornets have been pleading poverty. This is a squad in need of serious surgery all across the park, particularly if star centre back Wesley Hoedt is also flogged – as is being suggested. They have poor goalkeepers and, unless Vakoun Bayo can improve on a record of one red card for every goal through the last 25 games of last season, a crap selection of strikers without Asprilla. Linked with Kenneth Paal, who has one year left on his QPR deal so would be eminently affordable, they’ve instead gone for a quick borrow of Troyes Yasser Larouci, who spent last season at Sheff Utd and was… frightening. Moussa Sissoko, 34, has been given a two-year deal. Hmmmm.

Pozzo was once hailed as being so far ahead of the game in scouting, recruitment and retention. He’d pick up four or five players a season, from nowhere, for buttons, that other, bigger fatter, stupider clubs then happily paid ten times the price for a year or so later. There's nothing more obsolete than yesterday's vision of the future - Tim Parks. For a couple of years now there’s been a serious talent drain at Vicarage Road, without adequate replacement in quantity or quality. Sporting director Gianluca Nani is also the sporting director at Udinese, and it’s starting to feel very strongly like Watford are the less important part of that Pozzo relationship – with the money, attention and priority focused very much on Northern Italy rather than North London. Udinese’s spend this summer is knocking on the door of £30m – Watford have spent £200k.

Tom Cleverley is the manager here, and has plenty of credit in the bank with supporters for the way he stabilised last season, and of course his playing career in yellow. They’ve brought in the likes of Dan Gosling and Lloyd Doyley to coach the younger players, giving the thing a more ‘Watford’ feel. But Gareth Ainsworth was popular with QPR fans too, it’s certainly no guarantee of anything.

England youth international Ryan Andrews is a prospect at right back/right wing back. Giorgi Chakvetadze was a breakout star of the Euros with a swashbuckling Georgia outfit. There’s a month to go and Pozzo surely won’t want his investment to dip down another level – there will surely be multiple incomings with the money received this summer.

It’s hard to believe Pozzo is really going to send Watford into a season in this state. There will surely by substantial transfer activity between now and the end of the month. That’s the only thing keeping them from the bottom three in our predictions. They were only able to finish 11th and 15th when they had parachute payments, now they look like an absolute trainwreck.

Manager – Tom Cleverley If he’s still here in May I’ll buy you a Coke.

Opposition View – Richard Segal “A real mixed bag to begin with last season. Two wins in 11, then a win at home to Sheff Wed which seemed to buy Ismael a bit more time and avoid the dreaded message from Scott Duxbury to come and see him and the owners. Back-to-back wins in the North West before Christmas had us up to a nose bleeding seventh place and dreaming of a sunny May day out at Wembley, but then nine games at home without a win and a defeat at home to Coventry led to the aforementioned message being delivered after all and time for another new manager.

“The crux of the issue is the transfer business done so far, owners who are looking to sell and assets being sold. From a team that finished 15th last year Ismael Kone has gone to Marseille, Yaser Asprilla is on the verge of going to Rennes or Leicester and if it was not for getting injured in a pre-season game it looked like club captain and player of the season Wesley Hoedt was also heading out of the door. I recently saw a tweet which mentioned that if you take Asprilla’s impending move that Watford have sold €226m and spent €23m, great business for the owners but not so great for a club who will have a huge battle on their hands to finish 21st.

“A lack of quality up front is the biggest issue, as I write this 72 hours before a visit to The Den it looks like we are starting the season with Vakoun Bayo, Mileta Rajovic and a kid from Celtic called Rocco Vata. We must get some firepower in before the end of August. I like the addition of Moussa Sissoko as that experienced player in the middle of the park, I also expect a good season from Giorgi Chakvetadeadze

“We don’t really know what’s going on, how we’re supposedly suddenly skint after receiving parachute payments and big transfer fees. I don’t know how to answer that, apart from the owners want out of Dodge and maybe Duxbury does. However the £955k annual salary might persuade him to stay around.
“It’s going to be a big struggle. I’m trying not to panic until the end of August and to see what squad we end up with. Most Watford fans would take 21st place at this point.”

Prediction: 21st Three mediocre sides promoted from a weak League One need to find some Championship teams they can target to finish above if they’re to survive. Watford should be on that list, somewhere near the top.

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Thicess added 09:11 - Aug 13 I hope that this article serves as a wake-up call for both clubs and fans to rethink their understanding of consistency and what truly makes for a successful and engaging football team. https://blockblastonline.com
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