LFW’s exhaustive/ball aching annual run down of the Championship’s runners and riders starts, as always, with the teams the bookies think will challenge for the top spots.

Leicester 4/1 (title odds)

Last Season: James Maddison, Harvey Barnes, Jamie Vardy, Kelechi Iheanacho, Youri Tielemans, Wesley Fofana, Timothy Castagne, Patson Daka… arguably not since Glenn Roeder brought a West Ham squad containing Michael Carrick, Joe Cole, Jermain Defoe, Paolo Di Canio, Trevor Sinclair, Les Ferdinand, David James, Tomas Repka and others down from the Premier League has a more talented, well-furnished outfit been relegated from the top division in this country.

Leicester, champions as recently as 2016, were complacent about their fate right to the bitter end. As late as the first week of March, James Maddison was windmilling into social media to brand a story from journalist Rob Tanner about the poor state of the club and the team “rubbish” and urge Tanner to: “Watch and analyse the game properly and stop writing headlines like that which you know makes fans pile on with negativity. Play like that and we’ll be absolutely fine. Created numerous brilliant chances and win comfortably on another day." They’d lost three on the spin at that stage, including a second defeat to fellow strugglers Southampton, and sat one place and two points above the dotted line. Maddison wasn’t the only one with plenty to say – Leicestershire’s premier wedding venue Kiernan Dewsbury Hall was a little bit prone to sliding into fans’ DMs if he didn’t like the heft of their jib.

Maddison caught headlines, but everywhere you looked was a club on the drift, where the finer details were being ignored, and everybody just assumed they’d get away with it. Leaving it as long as they did to ditch Brendan Rodgers, who’d said his team was “fatigued” after one game, a 2-2 draw with Brentford in which he made just one substitution, felt lazy rather than a show of faith. Rodgers looked done to me in September when they followed a 5-2 loss at Brighton, a seventh winless game after which he said “the great thing is the players are still together”, with a 6-2 loss at Spurs which included a 13-minute Heung-Min Son hat trick. He eventually survived all the way through to April 3. Whoever on earth then thought Dean Smith and Big Racist John was the combination to save them, given how the Justice League champion had approached a similar situation at Norwich the, wants sectioning.

There’s all the finer details stuff we’re currently bashing QPR for – ticketing systems that don’t work, setting up a “singing section” and then policing it like a demilitarised zone, pressing ahead with a summer tour of the Far East despite relegation and ending up with a game against Spurs postponed in a monsoon – but in the end the results spoke for themselves. They conceded four goals to Arsenal, five to Brighton and Fulham, six to Spurs, lost five of their six games against the newly promoted teams, lost to Championship side Blackburn in the FA Cup, drew with League Two Stockport in the League Cup, won two of the last 17 fixtures… And the frustration, all the way through, was they were well capable – Leicester 4-1 Spurs, Wolves 0-4 Leicester, Leicester 4-0 Forest, Villa 2-4 Leicester a remarkable set of results for a relegated team.

Ins >>> Harry Winks, 27, DM, Spurs, £9.96m >>> Conor Coady, 30, CB, Wolves, £7.46m >>> Mads Hermansen, 23, GK, Bronby, £6m >>> Callum Doyle, 19, CB, Man City, Loan

Outs >>> James Maddison, 26, AM, Spurs, £40m >>> Harvey Barnes, 23, LW, Newcastle, £40m >>> George Hirst, 24, CF, Ipswich, £1m >>> Youri Tielemens, 26, CM, Villa, Free >>> Caglar Soyunku, 27, CB, Atletico, Free >>> Daniel Amartey, 28, CB, Besiktas, Free >>> Ayoze Perez, 29, LW, Betis, Free >>> Jonny Evans, 35, CB, Man Utd, Free >>> Nampalys Mendy, 31, DM, Released >>> Ryan Bertrand, 33, LB, Released

Manager: Enzo Maresca Pep’s mate.

This Season: Leicester should absolutely piss this. A club, squad and team with absolutely no business being here in the first place, and tens of millions of pounds to make sure they’re not here for long. It looks absolutely ripe for a repeat of Newcastle’s cakewalk through this level under Rafa Benitez. To go with their parachute payment is £80m for James Maddison and Harvey Barnes, and while other big name departures will surely follow it will only provide more treasure to spend, you know on things we like. Any of Ndidi, Iheanacho, Castagne and others who do end up staying should carve this up in their sleep. Dewsbury-Hall was superb on loan at Luton previously, and has two years of Premier League football under his belt since then.

Coming in, names. More than £20m has been spent already on Tottenham’s Harry Winks, Everton’s Conor Coady and Danish goalkeeper Mads Hermansen. Between the sticks was a real issue for the Foxes in their first year without Kasper Schmeichel, but problem pair Danny Ward and Daniel Iversen were both outstanding in this league previously with Huddersfield and Preston. Man City’s Callum Doyle, excellent for Sunderland and Coventry on loan, has been brought in too. More will surely follow.

It’s being overseen by Enzo Maresca, who’s had two separate spells with Pep Guardiola at Man City, first guiding their EDS team to their league title, and then as assistant to their all-conquering team last year. I wouldn’t be expecting many channel balls. A word to the wise though, in between those appointments he was given the chance to restore big name Parma back to Serie A from Serie B, with a squad including names such as Gianluigi Buffon and Franco Vázquez, and won only four of his first 14 games before being binned in November. Still, his appointment must have come as something of a pleasant surprise, and no little relief, to the locals who for sometime this summer were being terrorised by the idea Scott Parker’s world beating agent had worked his magic again and convinced the board that what they needed was a succession of shithoused 1-0 home wins against Rotherham followed by Mike Skinner riffing on about how Leicester could never possibly compete with Plymouth Argyle and the monotony would continue unless the board gave him another £20m for another six signings.

It could be that all those little, finer details problems of a complacent, rudderless club on the drift that manifested themselves in last year’s shock relegation take more getting over than we’re giving it credit for. But, honestly, if this squad doesn’t win promotion this year I can’t wait to see the one that does.

Local Knowledge — Ian Gallagher @IanGallagher82 “Last season was the culmination of two bad years where we went from one of the best-run clubs in the land to the worst.

“It’ll be boom or bust, I think. If it goes well, we could be another Burnley and tear the league a new one. If it doesn't start well, I fear the fans' brittle patience may snap quite early on. The owners still have a lot of credit in the bank for the magnificent achievements of the last decade, but that won't last forever. I think the 'PSG of the Championship' tag will be worn with pride, or will be a noose around our necks. Only time will tell...”

Prediction: 1st Lazy pick.

Leeds 7/1 (title odds)

Last Season: Leeds are, I’m not sure you’re aware, absolutely massive. Champions of Europe. Don Revie, Billy Bremner, David Weatherall, all the greats. The cauldron of Elland Road, which was never half full with that top tier closed regardless of what you think you remember because Leeds always would have taken more and always will take more. Idiot scum like us shouldn’t even try and hold a candle to their majesty.

With all this mightiness came the perception that this was a Premier League club in waiting, grossly under achieving by bobbing about in a poxy league like the Championship. The various financial collapses, myriad dodgy owners and stint in administration did not matter. Nor a three-year stint in League One. Nor appointing managers of the calibre of Steve Evans and Dave Hockaday. Nor fielding absolute honkers like Paul Rachubka, Marius Zaliukas and Giuseppe Bellusci. Nor the decay of their old stadium to the point now where three sides of it are one of the worst grounds in this league, never mind the one above it. You might think this club has been overtaken and left behind not only by Spurs, Villa and Newcastle, but by Brentford, Brighton and Bournemouth too. But you’d be wrong, apparently. Leeds Leeds Leeds. Premier League club.

And so when they got to the Premier League, finally, as Championship champions 2019/20, with Marcelo Bielsa as manager and Kalvin Phillips in midfield, it was just reported as an inevitability that had been a peculiarly long time coming. Leeds were back in the Premier League because Leeds belong in the Premier League, and not at all just because they had a generational coaching talent in charge elevating people like Patrick Bamford, Luke Ayling and Tyler Roberts to levels they would otherwise never possibly have got to, and a future England international in midfield. Perhaps they even started to believe this themselves because at the first sign of trouble Bielsa was fired under the Alan Curbishley Charlton syndrome of “taken us as far as he can”. Phillips was then sold to Man City.

They rattled quickly through Jesse Marsch, Javi Gracia and Big Sam Allardyce (quite the fucking journey to get from Marcelo Bielsa to that fat mess in such a short period of time) and were swiftly and deservedly relegated. A must win at West Ham, on the Sunday after they’d had a hangover-inducing semi-final win away in Holland on the Thursday, was comfortably lost. As they were always going to be. Because however massive Leeds are, or believe themselves to be, and whether they like it or not, they were Marcelo Bielsa and Marcelo Bielsa was them. They were Marcelo Bielsa FC. And the notion that any of the dogs he’d turned into footballers and dragged to promotion by their bollocks would ever possibly maintain anything close to that level once he’d gone was a fantasy. The second he left they turned immediately back into what they’d been for the previous 16 years – a lower division football team.

Ins >>> Ethan Ampadu, 22, DM, Chelsea, £6.9m >>> Karl Darlow, 32, GK, Newcastle, £300k

Outs >>> Rodrigo, 32, CF, Al-Rayyan, £3m >>> Tyler Roberts, 23, Tart, Birmingham, £500k >>> Robin Koch, 26, CB, Frankfurt, Loan >>> Joel Robbles, 33, GK, Al-Qadsiah, Free >>> Brenden Aaronson, 23, CF, Union Berlin, Loan >>> Rasmus Kristensen, 26, RB, Roma, Loan >>> Marc Roca, 26, DM, Betis, Loan >>> Diego Llorente, 29, CB, Roma, Loan >>> Adam Forshaw, 31, CM, Released

Manager: Daniel Farke And the portrait of the fallen Madonna with the big boobies.

This Season: Leeds have new owners – American 49ers Enterprises is a consortium that includes golfers Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas as minority investors.

The new manager is Daniel Farke, who has won promotion from this level twice before with Norwich but did so at what was then a settled, well-run club with an astute director of football and a substantial chunk of money to spend from the sale of James Maddison which Farke used to bring half the Bundesliga across to Norfolk with him.

Leeds will have all the grotesque financial advantages the other relegated teams have over the rest of the mere mortals at their disposal but, unlike Leicester who’ve already pocketed a further £80m for petty cash from their own sale of Maddison as well as Harvey Barnes, the Whites have been chucking stuff overboard at sale prices. A number of expensive Premier League flops – Koch, Kristensen, Wober, Aaronson, Roca and Llorente, some £90m worth of purchases – are now or shortly to be all out on loan. Rodrigo, who they spent £27m on just three years ago, has gone to Al-Rayvan (shabba) for just £3m. Wilfried Gnonto could be their cash cow if/when he leaves. If he stays he’ll be embarrassingly too good for this level. But delays in this, and the complications of the takeover, mean summer recruitment so far stretches as far as Ethan Ampadu, shortly to turn 23 and now needing to stop waving around his potential and start fucking after six seasons of first team football all over Europe.

They’ve been well backed into second favourite, as you would expect. But like I say this was a midtable Championship team elevated far beyond its means by a generational youth team graduate in midfield and one of the most innovative coaches that’s ever lived. Without either of them they’ve quickly regressed straight back to what they were before. Simple economics might well push them into contention in Farke’s safe pair of hands, though as with Bielsa to Marsch, Marsch to Gracia and Gracia to Allardyce it’s once more replacing one manager with one style with another whose outlook is almost the complete opposite.

They look stodgy and uninspiring to me at first glance. Most tellingly of all, the locals, who are never short of over confidence when it comes to their team, are far more pessimistic about their chances than the outsiders are.

Local Knowledge — Nico Franks “The big mistake last season was failing to sack Jesse Marsch in late October when we could have used the winter World Cup break to bring in someone more qualified. Instead we sat on our hands and hoped for the best, ultimately leading to the fever dream that was Big Sam at Elland Road.

“A softly spoken German is not a vibe we've had in the dugout before at Leeds so I'm intrigued to see what will happen with Daniel Farke. He's undeniably likeable, has proven experience in the Championship and looks confident riding a horse.

“Ethan Ampadu from Chelsea has been the headline signing so far and the initial signs from him look promising. But we seem to be dragging our heels reinforcing in other areas where we're weak, like up front (Bamford has had so many false starts now I fear he's a busted flush).

“Holding on to at least two out of Gnonto, Harrison, Adams and Sinisterra would stand us in good stead to get out. Max Wober, who looked very comfortable in the Premier League and would probably have smashed the Championship, sadly isn't up for the scrap and has cried off to Germany on loan, along with Aaronson and Marc Roca, both of whom have failed upwards to teams playing in Europe. Good riddance.

“The big question is do we do a Burnley or do we do a Leeds? The difference between this season and our previous attempts to get out of the Championship is the parachute payments we spent years watching other teams benefit from are now ours to put to good use/fritter away. Farke's success going up with Norwich twice was aided by standout players like Buendía and Pukki who were way above Champo standard. Adams/Harrison and Sinisterra/Gnonto could be his equivalents this season – but these players are either injury prone or no longer play for Leeds by the time you're reading this. We will finish fourth and lose to Millwall in the play-off semis. It's good to be back. Did you miss us? I didn't think so.”

Prediction: 7th The least inspiring of the relegated teams, but then we said exactly that about Burnley this time last year and had them seventh as well.

Southampton 7/1 (title odds)

Last Season: If you’ve been booting around at the bottom of the Premier League for a while, selling talent without replacing it adequately, losing games most week, conceding nine goals in a game on more than one occasion, it doesn’t actually have to matter. The gap between Premier League and Championship is pretty vast, so most of the promoted teams start as favourites to go straight back. Finish seventeenth, ditch out of both cups first chance you get, Mykonos for all the players by March, it’s a life of sorts. The Premier League financially rewards mediocrity more than any other league in the world. Until Fulham, Bournemouth and Forest all come up and stay up. Then you’ve got a problem, and you won’t be alone.

Everywhere you looked, you could see this coming for Southampton. This was once a club of Mauricio Pochettino, Ronald Koeman and Claude Puel, who finished 8th, 7th, 6th and 8th in the top flight, with European football, and a League Cup final. Sadio Mane was top scorer here in 2016, Virgil Van Dijk minded the shop. Since then… Mauricio Pellegrino, who won eight of his 34 games in charge: Meticulous Mark Hughes, who won five of 27: Ralf Hasenhuttl, who did at least stem some bleeding for a while. The league placings again speak volumes: 17th, 16th, 11th, 15th, 15th and then, finally, inevitably…

The death of benevolent and inspirational owner Marcus Liebherr in 2010 was an enormous blow. His daughter Katharina sold a majority stake in 2017 to a Chinese investor, Gao Jisheng, which always goes well in British football. He offloaded it to Sport Republic, the latest investment vehicle pursuing a multi-club ownership structure and player development model. Their first full season in charge, 22/23, saw a clutch of arrivals with a focus on youth: Gavin Bazunu, Mateusz Lis, Armel Bella-Kotchap, Roméo Lavia, Joe Aribo, Sékou Mara, Duje Ćaleta-Car, Samuel Edozie, Juan Larios and Ainsley Maitland-Niles. They doubled down again in January with Kamaldeen Sulemana. Mislav Oršić, Carlos Alcaraz, James Bree and Paul Onuachu. Sulemana cost them £25m.

The decline and inevitable disaster awaiting at the end of it reached its nadir in November last year when Southampton inflicted celebration police Nathan Jones on the Premier League, and their own supporters. A man capable of a 90-minute argument, with himself on both sides of the row, and nobody else in the room, by way of a press conference. He lost his job 94 days later, quicker than any Southampton manager ever, and certainly crammed a lot in, including denying Man City their quadruple by dumping them out of the League Cup. In the FA Cup they lost to Grimsby Town. Jones said all his strikers scored goals and got big moves, and he would improve Che Adams accordingly – Adams failed to score during his tenure. He started a ‘war of words’ with the Southampton supporting manager of Havant and Waterlooville over a Tweet. He said there “weren’t many better than me in all of Europe”. He said he could have “stayed in the valleys, been a PE teacher, married a nice Welsh girl”. He said Wolves being reduced to ten men in the first half of a 2-1 win at St Mary’s benefitted them because it gave them “a free hit”. They finished dead last, 11 points clear of safety, with two home wins all season.

The owners have admitted that, in hindsight, being absent and relying on others to run the club for them perhaps wasn’t the best move. Hmmm, sounds familiar. Jason Wilcox has arrived from the Man City stable this summer in a director of football-type role.

Ins >>> Shea Charles, 19, DM, Man City, £10m >>> Ryan Manning, 27, Mercenary, Swansea, Free

Outs >>> Mislav Orsic, 30, LW, Trabzonspor, £2m >>> Mohamed Elyounoussi, 28, LW, Copenhagen, Free >>> Ibrahima Diallo, 24, DM, Al-Duhail, Undisclosed >>> Dan Nlundulu, 24, CF, Bolton, Undisclosed >>> Mateusz Lis, 26, GK, Goztepe, Loan >>> Theo Walcott, 34, AM, Released

Manager: Russell Martin Maybe this will finally be a squad of sufficient quality to perfect that one-two from your own goal kick thing he’s been trying for the last five years?

This Season: And so we come to that annual bit of the season preview where we talk about how utterly, stupefyingly boring it was watching QPR against Russell Martin’s teams the year before.

Having played 180 minutes against Rangers without even scoring a goal in 21/22, Swansea did at least manage two, and four points, against our rabble in 22/23. They also rose from the dizzying heights of 15th to 10th. But with a striker of the standard of Joel Piroe, 41 goals in two Championship seasons, and the brilliant Matt Grimes in midfield, was that adequate? It was all just terribly predictable. Ryan Manning produced his best season in Swans’ colours, coincidentally just as his contract was running out and having followed Martin to St Mary’s he’ll now start that process all over again. Harry Darling won a header once every six or seven weeks. There were two separate spurts of seven wins from nine games, and two other spells of one win in ten. Martin talked about the process a lot. They beat Cardiff twice. And finished exactly where we said they would, to the place.

For two years of unsuccessfully trying to execute a goal kick routine where the keeper passes it to a square defender and receives the one two back ten yards further forwards before larruping it downfield anyway, Martin has been given one of the biggest jobs in the division. He inherits exactly the sort of youthful, lightweight, footballing squad he adores, and to that you can add Will Smallbone who was Stoke’s best player on loan in this league last year and Nathan Tella who was similar at Burnley. At the moment he’s also got James Ward Prowse, who’ll surely be the best player in this division by a street if he stays – a £25m bid from West Ham was rebuffed a week before the season. Tella may yet return to Burnley, Ward Prowse will surely move on, Kyle Walker-Peters is talking to Fulham so as well as adapting to Martin’s extremes there’s also that chance of the squad looking substantially different by the end of the transfer window, by which time we’re four games deep into the campaign. There’ll likely be £100m of sales to come here along with parachute payments and £10m of that has already gone on Man City junior Shea Charles. Adam Armstrong was too good for this league at Blackburn, and Che Adams should do nicely back at his level. Nigerian Paul Onuachu has become a bit of a standing joke after his £15m move from Genk in January yielded 11 appearances, no goals, and a bad injury, but he’s back in training now and it’s worth remembering Genk won 19 of their first 22 league games with him and then only six of their final 18 without.

It’s the flattest track possible for Martin to prove his precious process works after all. But he’ll also inherit expectations, and a toxic atmosphere among a demanding fan base sick and tired of years of decline at their club. There were boos from the stand as they lost 3-2 to Bournemouth in pre-season last week, and if you reckon you reckon you’ve seen a more Russell Martin set of highlights than this then I simply don’t believe you.

Local Knowledge — Saints Analysis @saints_analysis “A lot went wrong for Saints last season. We were terrible at converting key chances, and the defence also became very leaky. There was upheaval on the manager front too, and it’s clear the Nathan Jones appointment was never a good fit despite us needing to move on from Ralph Hasenhuttl. Add in a lack of experience to help what was a very young squad, and that’s why we got relegated.

“I see Saints in the strongest six sides in the league currently, so a season for fans to get their enjoyment back and a place in the play-offs would be ideal - even though we know it’s a lottery. No reason why we can’t go for automatic promotion either, but we will be vying with Leicester/Leeds and some top sides already in the division. Again, success will be based on giving Russell Martin the right tools to succeed.”

Prediction: 4th I’m not sure I really believe in this prediction myself though. I don’t trust this manager, as you may have noticed.

Middlesbrough 10/1 (title odds)

Last Season: The LFW Season Preview tip for the title is a millstone that’s snapped stronger necks than Middlesbrough’s. As chairman of the Chris Wilder Fan Club, I felt sure the squad at his disposal, with money to spend after the sale of James Tavernier, and signings like Marcus Forss and the brilliant Ryan Giles on the way in, would surely be there or thereabouts. And then I told that story about how I worked on the newspaper in Alfreton where he won every trophy in world football in a three month spell before embarking on a decade of promotions and success at Halifax, Oxford, Northampton and Sheff Utd. Never mind the relegated Premier League teams, this lot will be top, I confidently predicted. Boro then won two of their first 12 games, including a dramatic 3-2 loss at Loftus Road, and sacked Wilder in early October. Their 1-0 defeat to then bottom of the table Coventry in his final game placed them 22nd. Because of course. Stick with me kids.

The recovery from both Cov and Boro thereafter was little short of remarkable. Starting with a 4-1 victory at Wigan in mid-October, Michael Carrick’s Middlesbrough won 19 of their next 24 games. The 3-1 pasting that pushed Neil Critchley over the edge at Rangers was a fifth victory in a row and ninth in ten league games. The 3-1 win at Bramall Lane just prior enhanced the impression that financially collapsing Sheff Utd were vulnerable to being overtaken in second. Chuba Akpom went from a player you would have been a bit ‘meh’ about us signing, to a striker who scored at one point 26 goals in 30 games. Villa’s Cameron Archer was, predictably, mesmeric. There was a great team capable of winning promotion here just like we thought, but Wilder was holding the thing back – being exactly right, for entirely the opposite reason, very LFW indeed.

Quite what happened then is open for debate. With Paul Heckingbottom’s Sheff Utd eventually holding off the challenge, Boro were left in that weird place Harry Redknapp’s QPR megastars found themselves in 2013/14 – already qualified for the play-offs, but unable to make the automatics, and still with half a dozen games left to play. Amidst team changes and rest for key players Boro started to falter with just two wins from the last eight games. That’s fine, like my grandad’s technique of turning the car off at the top of hills and freewheeling into busy junctions to save petrol was fine, as long as you can turn the thing back on at the crucial moment, or preferably just before.

Ran out of steam? Put the cue on the rack and the other bloke cleaned up? Got complacent? Lost momentum? Difficult to say, but Coventry and Mark Robins did an absolute tactical number on them in the play-off semi-final and richly deserved their 1-0 second leg win at the Riverside that took them to Wembley.

Ins >>> Seny Dieng, 28, GK, QPR, £2m >>> Tom Glover, 25, GK, Melbourne, Free >>> Jamie Jones, 34, GK, Wigan, Free >>> Alex Gilbert, 21, LW, Brentford, Free >>> Morgan Rogers, 20, LW, Man City, Undisclosed >>> Rav van den Berg, 18, CB, Zwolle, Undisclosed >>> Sam Silvera, 22, LW, Central Coast, Undisclosed

Outs >>> Grant Hall, 31, CB, Rotherham, Free >>> Luke Daniels, 35, GK< Forest Green, Free >>> Marc Bola, 25, LB, Samsunspor, Undisclosed >>> Liam Roberts, 28, GK, Barnsley, Loan >>> Joe Lumley, 28, GK, Released >>> Darnell Fisher, 29, RB, Released

Manager: Michael Carrick Three-hour special on “The Overlap” incoming.

This Season: In what looks like a much stronger Championship this year than last, we’ll quickly find out whether Carrick’s immediate and dramatic impact at the Riverside was the start of a new managerial dynasty, or simply extreme new manager bounce from a talented squad that was grossly underperforming for a problematic predecessor. Ryan Giles has gone, and is not returning. Cameron Archer has gone, and is not returning. Is Chuba Akpom going to do 28 goals in 35 games again without them, or go back to being what he’d always been before? He hasn’t played at all in pre-season amidst talk of a transfer.

In goal, a familiar face. Seny Dieng may have been poor for QPR in 22/23, but playing in that team, in that form, behind four centre backs in varying stages of nervous or physical breakdown, cannot have been easy. A fresh start, away from the bright lights of London that shine clearly through his busy Instagram account (“don’t let him out” said Viktor Anichebe under his move announcement), could be good for him and work very well for Boro who flew by the seat of their pants with the somewhat wild Zack Steffen and suffered the many calamitous adventures of Joe Lumley the year before. After 24 months of that it’s perhaps little wonder Dieng is one of three goalkeepers signed this summer already.

There’s a focus on youth, speed and technical in the other recruits. Winger Mogan Rodgers (20) is in from Man City academy, forward Alex Gilbert (19) from Brentford B and defender Rav Van Den Berg (18) from Zwolle. Martin Payero is back for a second swing at the Championship after a year back in South America. More will follow, and their success could depend on how close their new ventures into the loan market get to the impossibly high standard set by Archer.

Local Knowledge — James Boothby @jamesyboz “I think last season we just ran out of momentum at the wrong time. It was probably a combination of factors really but we suffered a couple of key injuries in the last couple of months with Howson/McGree/Ramsey/Fry all missing chunks of time. And as stupid as it sounds, we probably secured the play-offs a bit too early. We started to rest some of our other key players to ensure they did not get injured and we seemed to struggle to turn it back on when we needed. But it was a fantastic season overall, played the best football I have seen for many years. Part of me does think though it was THE big opportunity to make it back the PL.

“I think another tilt at the playoffs should be the target for us. Have seen a few predictions with us in the top two, but without strengthening up front especially I struggle to see that. Looks to be a stronger league this season but with the Championship you just never know. All being well a top six finish, and hopefully not play-off heartbreak again.”

Prediction: 2nd Fuck it, make me another omelette.

Norwich 14/1 (title odds)

Last Season: After four years happily swapping backwards and forwards with Fulham, 2022/23 turned out to be the year the Cottagers made a success of the Premier League and the Canaries ran out of yo.

Under Dean Smith’s wholly uninspiring charge, watching Norwich felt like trying to complete a long journey using only the District Line. In theory you’re getting where you need to go — at one point Norwich won seven and lost none of ten — but it’s all just so slow and dull you can feel the life draining out of you as the rest of the world trundles past the window. When the expectant home masses started to vocalise their displeasure at a manager taking all the myriad advantages the parachute payment clubs have at their disposal — Norwich paid more for Josh Sargent than Rotherham have spent in the history of their club, and the Millers left Carrow Road with a 0-0 draw — and using it to create wallpaper paste, Smith rather ill-advisedly turned it back on them and accused them of creating a negative and hostile atmosphere for their own players. It’s a bold strategy Cotton…

Smith’s always been an insufferable, whinging excuse merchant, and his inability to ever once accept responsibility for the underperformance of his team had caught up with him. In the next game at Luton, another club operating on a fraction of Norwich’s budget that nevertheless beat them, the fans spent the evening signing “it’s all our fault” on a loop. Now untenable, Smith left to pursue an identical career opportunity — relegating Leicester. Sporting director Stuart Webber chose an airport he knew for the emergency landing, re-teaming with David Wagner having enjoyed great success in their Huddersfield days. Norwich, however, won only one of their last 11 matches, and haven’t scored in their last five home games. Webber is now a man under severe pressure in Norfolk.

Ins >>> Christian Fassnacht, 29, RM, Young Boys, £2.5m >>> Borja Sainz, 22, LW, Giresunspor, Free >>> Shane Duffy, 31, CB, Brighton, Free >>> Jack Stacey, 27, RB, Bournemouth, Free >>> Ashley Barnes, 33, CF, Burnley, Free

Outs >>> Bali Mumba, 21, RB, Plymouth, £1m >>> Kieran Dowell, 25, AM, Rangers, Free >>> Teemu Pukki, 33, CF, Minnesota, Free >>> Daniel Sinani, 26, RW, St Pauli, Free >>> Michael McGovern, 39, GK, Hearts, Free >>> Abu Kamara, 19, CF, Portsmouth, Loan >>> Sam Byram, 29, RB, Released >>> Josh Martin, 21, LW, Released

Manager: David Wagner Daniel Farke with less seedier tastes in porn.

This Season: Norwich flew out of the gates this summer with the early captures of 33-year-old Ashley Barnes and 31-year-old Shane Duffy. Look, quote it back to me in May if you like, I’m wrong all the time, but these feel like the signings of a team settling in for a long old sit at the Championship table. Fail to get promoted this year and those parachute payments start declining into an FFP ticking clock. Their previous cheat sheet at this level, Teemu Pukki, has left for the MLS after an outstanding return of 88 goals in 210 appearances in yellow.

Stuart Webber and David Wagner did brilliant things together at Huddersfield, and the sporting director’s early combination with another German, Daniel Farke, repeated the trick initially at Carrow Road. But he’s come under heavy fire in recent months after their aborted attempt to spend their way into Premier League survival last time out ended disastrously. Having reunited with Wagner it seems strange that he will now depart “imminently”, although exactly when that will be and what sort of replacement they’ll get is part of an increasingly confused and defensive club communication strategy which is exacerbating strained relationships with a large and loyal fanbase in these parts.

Big money coming in for a Max Aarons type may lead to the sort of squad reinvention Farke was able to perform early in his reign with the James Maddison money, but Aarons didn’t exactly tear up many trees last season either. Perhaps Andrew Omobamidele might be a better bet for a discerning shopper. They’ve also, in theory, got a lot of injured players who missed a poor run of one win in the last 11 games to come back in – though new signing Borja Sainz is already missing the first three months.

There is, simply put, very little to get excited about here bar Gabriel Sara and Marcelino Nunez. It looks like a big stretch even for the top half of the table at this stage, never mind the top six.

Local Knowledge — Jon Punt @Puntino Last season was, indeed, turgid. The club were at pains to point out that promotion, ideally automatically, was the stated ambition. Points wise it was a promising start but the football never really felt fit for purpose under Smith and sadly results and performances regressed to a point where his position was completely untenable and insults from the stands had become as personal towards a manager as I’ve ever heard at Carrow Road.

“I see the season going quite badly. A sporting director that has already announced he’ll leave the club imminently and a head coach that has been appointed by the same guy. I’m not sure we’ve ever seen that kind of equation end well. Let’s say we’ll finish fourteenth and we’ll have had three different head coaches. Kind of like Watford, but shitter.”

Prediction: 16th Been wrong before though.

Ipswich 16/1 (title odds)

Last Season: Ipswich had been in the Championship for 15 consecutive seasons when their attempt to break the acrimonious monotony of Mick McCarthy’s reign with Paul Hurst and his ‘best of the lower leagues’ signings went badly wrong and they were relegated dead last. McCarthy’s relationship with the locals had soured to such an extent he’s enjoyed poking them with typically witty “that went well then” barbs because I’m Jeff Average, a ruddy bloke, from t’north, who says what everybody is thinking, and dun’t go in for any of that modern rubbish or foreign muck like… passing the ball from one player to another on the same team. You wouldn’t have wanted to watch his Ipswich team, and his record since, in every job he’s had, shows very clearly why. I think we’re the only team he’s fucking beaten.

The team Ipswich are coming back with is unrecognisable. There were false starts, and plenty of rebuilding to do, under first Paul Lambert and then the many throaty versions of the occasionally possessed Paul Cook, but things have set light since former Spurs and Man Utd academy coach Kieran McKenna. They romped to a promotion with chest hair in 22/23 - 98 points (98? I was going to get 102 but 98’s ok I guess), one home defeat all season, no losses and 13 wins from their final 15 games. That run that included nine clean sheets and 45 goals scored (QPR scored 44 league goals in total). Ipswich thrashed Championship side Rotherham in the cup, and took our champions Burnley to a replay which they only lost in the last minute at Turf Moor. They haven’t lost a league game since January 21. They scored 101 goals, and had a goal difference of +66 which is a bigger gap than four of the 12 teams in the Super League – a sport where you get four points for a try and two for a goal.

Cole Skuse punting channel balls for Martyn Waghorn and Freddie Sears to waddle after this ain’t.

Ins >>> Jack Taylor, 25, CM, Peterborough, £1.5m >>> George Hirst, 24, CF, Leicester, £1.5m >>> Cieren Slicker, 20, GK, Man City, Undisclosed >>> Omari Hutchinson, 19, AM, Chelsea, Loan

Outs >>> Joe Pigott, 29, CF, Orient, Free >>> Rakeem Harper, 23, AM, Burton, Free >>> Joel Coleman, 27, GK, Bolton, Free >>> Kane Vincent-Young, 27, RB, Wycombe, Free >>> Richard Keogh, 36, CB, Wycombe, Free >>> Panutche Camara, 26, CM, Charlton, Loan >>> Idris El Mizouni, 22, CM, Orient, Loan >>> Tete Yengi, 22, CF, KUPS (Finland), Loan >>> Corrie Ndaba, 23, CB, Kilmarnock, Loan >>> Gassan Ahadme, 22, CF, Cambridge, Loan >>> Matt Penney, 25, LB, Released

Manager: Kieran McKenna Very successful graduation from his cup final success on Bend It Like Beckham, and this time he’s done it without knobbing one of the players.

This Season: FFP does exist in League One, but unlike the Championship an owner can simply override it by writing off any money they put into the club – it essentially doesn’t count unless you leverage against the club as debt. This rule, in the Championship, would benefit QPR enormously because it’s how our owners operate anyway. In the league below, it leads to two broad approaches.

The first is to basically go nuts on exactly the sort of expensive, lavishly salaried, big name 30-somethings with no sell on value who get you into FFP problems in the Championship in the first place. You might successfully bully the third tier into submission with David McGoldrick, James Collins (both Derby), Aden Flint, Lee Gregory, Michael Smith (all Sheff Wed), or Max Power, Charlie Wyke and Will Keane (all Wigan) but are they going to be good enough in the Championship? And are you going to have the FFP headroom under the more stringent rules to perform an overhaul if not? Wigan struggled, Sheff Wed already look fairly doomed this, and the team Paul Warne is assembling would do likewise in this league.

The trick is to build a young, vibrant, forward thinking, modern squad of young-ish players in the more favourable financial climate, find that brilliant manager who fits that whole ethos, and then when you arrive in the Championship you’re just one or two signings away from being ready to compete, and one or two brilliant loans away from even more than that. Sunderland, as we’ll discuss shortly, piled on into the play-offs with the crux of the team they brought with them, despite the manager walking out and a plethora of injuries to key players.

Of the three promoted teams this time, Kieran McKenna’s Ipswich look best set to follow that model. Their approach best summed up by the January capture of Nathan Broadhead from Everton – easily the best player on the pitch when QPR played Wigan at Loftus Road last October, a scorer for Wales in Croatia at the back end of the campaign, and certainly not anybody with any business being in League One. He, like Ipswich, knew they wouldn’t be down there for long. Conor Chaplin, a regular magnet for message board admiration whenever we used to play him in Barnsley colours, scored 29 goals last time out including 13 in his last 15 games. Jack Taylor is a fine permanent addition from Peterborough and, like Sunderland, they’ve moved quickly and aggressively to get some young Premier League star dust in the form of Omari Hutchinson (Chelsea) and Cieran Slicker (Man City). While QPR take Dominic Gape on trial, Ipswich have extended the contract of a local favourite called Massimo Luongo. Dom Ball, injured for most of last season, is also here.

It's great to have Ipswich back as one of our better, more local away days, after oh so much slogging backwards and forwards to Preston. But in a year where QPR are frantically scrabbling around trying to find three teams worse than them, having one of the promoted lot coming up in health as rude as this is less than ideal.

Local Knowledge — Phil Ham @TWTDUK “Things started to move in the right direction the previous season after Kieran McKenna took over as manager and then last season everything fell into place. We had a very good and deep squad, an excellent spirit around the camp and McKenna instilled a way of playing which meant we totally controlled most matches. We were frustrated by one or two along the way, particularly over the Christmas period, but once we’d made some judicious purchases in January, we romped home with the 6-0 home victory over Exeter which confirmed promotion - a thirteenth win in 14 matches.

“I think we expect to be challengers towards the right end of the division given the way we ended last season looking significantly better than the rest of League One. We also impressed in our two games against Burnley in the FA Cup - we were beaten by a last-gasp goal in a replay at Turf Moor - having comfortably beaten Rotherham 4-1 at home in the same competition. The owners are ambitious so there will be no thoughts about a season of consolidation. The Premier League is the aim, although there is the recognition that that would be a big ask at the first attempt, particularly in a season in which the Championship looks set to be stronger than usual at the top end.”

Prediction: 5th Real potential dark horse

Watford 18/1 (title odds)

Last Season: “The Rob Edwards revolution baby”, proclaimed one of the more prominent Watford blogs this time last year, predicting the Hornets for a play-off spot.

And to be fair I guess he was right. There was indeed a Rob Edwards revolution in the Championship, a play-off finish, and a Wembley promotion – it just happened a couple of junctions further up the M1. Gino Pozzo’s “I’ve changed this time Sharon, honest” promises of time, patience, backing for a head coach and all this sort of sorcery lasted all the way through to September 26. A chunky 11-game reign for the guy they poached from Forest Green qualifies him for a carriage clock in these parts.

This sort of nonsense had never really mattered that much at Vicarage Road. They rattled through three managers in their 2020/21 promotion, did so again in a failed attempt to stay in the Premier League in 21/22, and repeated the dose back in the Championship in 22/23. Since sacking Sean Dyche a decade ago they’ve had 19 permanent bosses – Dyche landed at Burnley who have had two bosses over the same period of time. It is just Watford do and - with parachute payments and their scandalous relationship with Udinese essentially meaning FFP doesn’t apply to them and they’re operating to different rules from the rest of us in this league - they’re usually there or thereabouts regardless. When Joao Pedro and Ismaila Sarr surprisingly stuck around beyond August they looked a shoo in.

Not so. Gloriously not so. All that stuff about building a team, cultivating a culture, balancing your dressing room, matters. It does matter. Edwards went off and won his promotion elsewhere to be replaced by Slaven Bilic who managed a whopping 26 games and ten wins followed mostly by him taking a long drag on a cigarette and saying “lot of injuries innit”. And if you thought he didn’t seem to give much of a fuck, that was nothing compared to Chris Wilder who won just three of 11 games and actually in the end seemed to be enjoying coming out after each disaster in turn and telling the world what complete cunts his players were, safe in the knowledge that he absolutely wouldn’t be there next season to deal with any consequences.

Managers know they get the sack here. The sport knows managers get the sack here, so don’t count it against their record. This encourages people like Bilic and Wilder to just come and pick up a bag of easy money. It finally feels like that attitude has started to bleed through to the playing squad. They were the only team to lose at Loftus Road in QPR’s last 15 home games, and looked thrilled to death about it. A team embarrassingly short of the sum of its parts.

A broken looking club that’s become something of a parody of itself.

Ins >>> Tom Ince, 31, RW, Reading, £50k >>> Rhys Healey, 28, CF, Toulouse, Free >>> Jake Livermore, 33, DM, West Brom, Free >>> Jamal Lewis, 25, LB, Newcastle, Loan >>> Giorgi Chakvetadze, 23, AM, Gent, Loan

Outs >>> Joao Pedro, 21, CF, Brighton, £30m >>> Ismaila Sarr, 25, RW, Marseille, £11m >>> William Troost-Ekong, 29, CB, Salonika, £900k >>> Joseph Hungbo, 23, Show Off, Nuremberg, £200k >>> Domingos Quina, 23, AM, Udinese, Undisclosed >>> Christian Kabasele, 32, CB, Udinese, Undisclosed >>> Ashley Fletcher, 27, CF, Sheff Wed, Loan >>> Britt Assombalonga, 30, CF, Released >>> Mario Gaspar, 32, RB, Released >>> Leandro Bacuna, 31, CM, Released >>> Craig Cathcart, 34, CB, Released >>> Dan Gosling, 33, CM, Released >>> Tom Cleverley, 33, CM, Retired

Manager: Valerian Ismael Never mind the quality, feel the width.

This Season: The Valerian Ismael revolution baby.

This is a bold choice. Ismael came to notable attention on these shores during the Covid lockdown by taking unfancied Barnsley into the play-offs playing an unusually high octane style of football, with a defence pushed so high it spent most of its time in the opposition half, a goalkeeper who played as sweeper, and three hard working strikers encouraged to drop back and condense whatever space was left by tearing about the place safe in the knowledge that the new five sub rule would allow them all to be replaced after an hour. It was effective, exhilarating at times, but could you watch it every week? At Barnsley he had the division’s youngest squad capable of keeping up with his extreme demands, he had zero expectation, and there were no crowds in the ground to intimidate one of the division’s lesser lights. Lightning in a bottle from a perfect storm.

It won him the job at West Brom, but problems surfaced almost immediately. West Brom are a bigger club, recently out of the Premier League, at that point still with money to spend, and with a notoriously aggy crowd back in the ground riddled with expectation. He inherited the division’s oldest squad, and it couldn’t run to the ridiculous level his football requires. He was binned by February. Besiktas picked him up – resources, crowd, expectation, older team, eight wins from 19 games, sack.

Watford need an absolute rocket up their arse. This is a dressing room long since resigned to tossing things off and doing its own thing. In theory Ismael is perfect for that, and their grossly unfair FFP workaround (Domingos Quina and Christian Kabasele’s undisclosed moves to Udinese this summer the 67th and 68th transfers between the two clubs in a decade, 57 of them a loan or undisclosed fee) along with big money sales of Pedro and Sarr will mean funds won’t be a problem. A whole clutch of 30-somethings have belatedly been tossed overboard. But, as at The Hawthorns, he inherits a squad unsuited to a method and style which requires enormous buy in from the players. Once more it’s an expectant and increasingly grumpy support base, who are going to be asked to go along with a fashion of football that is a brutal watch when it’s not clicking.

The early summer arrivals highlight the problem perfectly. Watford need experience, good pros, Championship nouse, to inject discipline, professionalism and steel into a broken dressing room – Tom Ince has arrived from Reading on an eyebrow-raising three-year deal, Jake Livermore from West Brom. But Ismael’s style requires youth, pace, and legs – Livermore himself has already proven unsuited to it once. Goalkeeper Denenenenenenena Bachmann, who also doesn’t seem suited to this style at all, getting a five-year deal and the captaincy is mad stuff. Jamal Lewis looks a better bet and it’ll be fascinating to see what Rhys Healey does returning to the UK after a successful spell with Toulouse. But the biggest problem of all is everybody – players, fans, other teams – know Ismael will only get a dozen games maximum to get it all turned around and motoring or he’ll be out.

Local Knowledge — Voices of the Vic Podcast @VoicesoftheVic “Last season was the result of an accumulation of years of complacency and poor decisions from those at the top. We’d built a clearly imbalanced squad full of below par players that couldn’t be shifted due to hilariously long contracts and forged an environment that essentially rewards the failure of the players. Every fan could see that we were continuing to recruit poorly, a shining example being the arrival of Mario Gaspar to play as an attacking wing back. Rob Edwards (you might remember he did in fact manage us) was doomed to fail before a ball was even kicked, leading to his immediate replacement with Slaven Bilic, who proved to be a really poor manager tactically. Chris Wilder eventually completed the hat-trick but brought very little impact.

“Expectations are low and I think that’s because fans are understandably very emotional at the moment. It has at times felt like we’re doomed to continue on this downward spiral but if anything this transfer window has been a giant step in the right direction. I’m absolutely confident we’ll be a much better unit than last season even if we do lack some quality. Depending on the rest of the window a play-off push wouldn’t surprise me but I’m gonna play it safe and call a top ten finish.”

Prediction: 14th Three more managers, and at least that many transactions with Udinese.

Sunderland 20/1 (title odds)

Last Season: Sunderland were funny weren’t they? Jason Steele coming to catch the ball ten yards outside his box; Jack Rodwell catching £60k a week to gently pedal an exercise bike; CEO dividing his time equally between bidding against himself for a part used Will Grigg his manager didn’t want and spicing up the run-out music with his own Ibiza club mix; 76-year-old brittle bone disease sufferer Jonny Williams staring off into the middle distance while his filmed-for-TV ‘private and confidential’ psychiatry session concludes “Jonny Williams is a man who needs to be loved”. Brilliant. How many episodes of this can you do? I’d like 30 please, everyday of my life until I die. On the riverrrrrrrrrr where we used to build t’booooooooats, and dad wor saaaaaaaaaaad.

Anyway, off they popped to League One and we forgot all about them. While there, though, something of an act has been got together. Don’t get me wrong, in many ways Sunderland are still as shambolically daft as they always were – conceding QPR’s first successful direct free kick for three years and the first goal from a goalkeeper in the history of the club to turn an injury time 2-0 lead into a 2-2 was very on brand. The club’s customer service, retail operations and ticketing are shambolic – the box office opens every other Thursday, from 11am until about quarter to 12, queues stretched for hours to buy this season’s new kit which was delivered without infant sizes, there are still people waiting to get into the weekend friendly at home to Mallorca this morning. But, football wise, Sunderland are now something of a model that clubs like Ipswich are trying to emulate.

They used the favourable FFP situation in League One not to build the sort of expensive group of surly, underperforming names that have blighted them for the previous decades, but to put together a young and vibrant team capable of coming into the Championship and hitting the ground running with only a few judicious adjustments and clever loans. From being a place where careers, if not bank balances, went to die, Sunderland is now the club that finally unlocked the talent in Jack Clarke. A club that once paid £10m for Didier Ndong is developing a reputation for shrewd European scouting of prospects like PSG's Edourd Michut/Patrice from The Inbetweeners. At a club where cloggers like Tore Andre Flo used to top up pensions, the signings from the last three windows have been aged 20, 17, 20, 19, 22, 18, 19, 21, 21, 21, 20, 21, 24, 21, 20, 21, 19, 20.

Among them, Man Utd winger Amad Diallo on loan, who was absolutely electric and arguably made the difference between a promoted team having a good return to the Championship, and the side going further still and making the play-offs where they were narrowly beaten by eventually-promoted Luton.

Ins >>> Jenson Seelt, 20, CB, PSV, £1,5m >>> Jobe Bellingham, 17, CM, Birmingham, £1.5m >>> Eliezer Mayenda, 18, CF, Sochaux, £700k >>> Nectarios Triantis, 20, CB, Central Coast, £300k >>> Bradley Dack, 29, AM, Blackburn, Free >>> Luis Semedo, 19, CM, Benfica, Undisclosed

Outs >>> Leon Dajaku, 22, ST, Hadjuk Split, Free >>> Bailey Wright, 30, CB, LC Sailors (Singapore), Free >>> Carl Winchester, 30, DM, Shrewsbury, Free >>> Alex Bass, 25, GK, Wimbledon, Loan >>> Joe Anderson, 22, CB, Shrewsbury, Loan

Manager: Moany Towbury Fans of his previous clubs would caution you to watch out for a post-Christmas collapse of everything that was good in the first half of the season.

This Season: The x factor provided by Diallo is unlikely to return this season, and Burnley are presently increasing derisory offers for Jack Clarke in increments of 50p. Both will/would be missed, and that difficult second album is definitely a factor for League One teams coming up – Burton, Blackpool and Barnsley were all relegated back to the third tier the year after initially confounding expectations when they first arrived in the Championship.

Here's the thing that should alarm the rest of the division though: Sunderland made the play-offs despite multiple setbacks that would have derailed most other clubs’ seasons.

Alex Neil, who to read our oppo interview in this column last year you’d think was the second coming, bizarrely left them for Stoke (shrewd move Moley) after five games. While QPR blamed a six-month collapse on Mick Beale walking out on them, Sunderland picked up our old mate Moany Towbury in a marriage of convenience and piled on regardless.

They brought with them Ross Stewart, a rangey 27-year-old striker they picked up in League One from Ross County, and he took to the division immediately – he’s now got 40 goals in 62 starts and 13 sub apps for the Mackems. He, initially, formed a partnership with loanee Ellis Simms that proved a real handful but, by the end of January, Everton had recalled Simms in a panic and Stewart’s season was over with an Achilles blow out. They were forced to do the back half of the campaign with Leeds’ to-this-point-overrated ruddy-faced child Joe Gelhardt as their main striker – three goals in 20 games, they’d probably have got that out of Macauley Bonne.

The injuries didn’t begin or end there. Dan Ballard, who I rated as the best defensive signing in the league last transfer window when they picked him up for less than £2m from Arsenal after a successful loan at Millwall, got crocked during our game up there in August in a challenge Albert Adomah was lucky not to be punished more harshly for. Danny Batth soon followed him to the treatment table. Loveable toerag Luke O’Nien, already converted to a right back from his midfield role at previous club Wycombe, ended up playing in the middle of a back three and four that frequently took the field without a recognised centre back at all. For their play-off semi-final with Luton O’Nien was partnered in the middle by 21-year-old right back Trai Hume, a £200k punt from Linfield, with attacking midfielder Patrick Roberts at right back and Lyndon Gooch on the left. They won 2-1 regardless.

They have the likes of 16-year-old Chris Rigg, who’s already playing first team, breaking through. Another summer of aggressive youth recruitment - silky defender Jenson Seelt, 20, PSV; midfielder Jobe Bellingham, 17, Birmingham; giant forward Luis Semedo, 19, Benfica, three goals in pre-season already - is well underway. They have departed from the plan enough to let Towbury cuddle up with Bradley Dack again, mind.

Southampton are one of a number of clubs sniffing around Stewart which could prove problematic but, with a better run of luck this season, the Championship could be laughing on the other side of its face.

Local Knowledge — Matthew Keeling, Wise Men Say Podcast @M_Keeling @WiseMenSayPod ) “Last season was the most fun we’ve had for years. I think with the minimal expectation as a promoted side the team thrived off there being very little pressure, other probably than to stay in the division. To almost get out of it at the other end of the table was incredible really. The players showed themselves, as a very young side, to not only be very talented and generally likeable, but also that they weren’t prepared to give up. Many wrote us off for the play-offs, to be fair I did, and the way we galvanised and managed to get there was testament to Mowbray and the squad. They dealt with a lot, Neil walking out, having no strikers for most of the season, and so many injuries, and above all they did themselves proud. It does feel like an opportunity missed though…

“It’ll be a difficult second album. We overachieved last season, make no bones about it. Yet it felt like an opportunity had slipped away when we lost the second leg to Luton. I think we will do incredibly well to match last season, and my expectations are more for a mid-table finish. The squad is so young, and though they dealt so well last season my worry is if they get off to a bad start. With the right additions of course, I think there are many positive signs, but I won’t be getting carried away. Eleventh, I would say. But I have been wrong before. Lots depends on who comes in and, arguably more importantly, who ends up leaving.”

Pete Sixsmith: “Last season was as enjoyable as any I have had for the last, ooh, 50 years. The brand of football played was exciting and full of enthusiastic young players who clearly wanted to achieve and who knew that the opportunity to do that at the biggest club in the second tier (and the sixth biggest league in Europe) was something that would sit well on any future CV.

“On the other hand, fail to sign a proven goal scorer and we could find it hard and end up scuffling along in the middle along with yourselves and the likes of Plymouth, Millwall and Preston North End. Which would be a shame…”

Prediction: 3rd

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gazza1 added 17:08 - Jul 31 Hell Norf......there are some predictions there!!!! Exceptional wisdom indeed.
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