Five days and counting...

CollinsBeans pre-season break is over (what with the World Cup, it lasted all of about two weeks or so) and we are just five days away from the start of the new football league season. Stay tuned over the coming days as we preview the runners and riders for the 10/11 Championship campaign

I think its best we call the articles to follow over the next few days a ‘preview’ rather than ‘predictions’, given that the Championship is one notoriously hard league to predict. Well normally that’s the case, however last season somewhat bucked the trend. Pretty much from the start of the season, pundits predicted that freshly relegated Newcastle United and West Bromwich Albion would go straight back up, and accordingly both did, and very much at a canter. Then again who would have predicted Blackpool joining them amongst the elite?

This seasons Championship campaign looks set to be a return to form in the unpredictably stakes, with the league looking incredibly wide open. Significantly perhaps, there don’t appear to be any teams who look to be head and shoulders above the rest like there was last time out. Many often look to the three sides relegated from the Premier League as favourites to be top dog, but the financial plights at Hull and particularly Portsmouth mean this is unlikely to be the case this season.

The effect of no outstanding teams, and no teams throwing around a lot of cash in these austere times has been to ‘level out’ the competition, with arguably every place from 1 all the way down to 24 looking realistically up for grabs. Sure Scunthorpe or Barnsley is unlikely to win the league, but the old adage of ‘anyone can beat anyone’ is perhaps never truer than in the ultra competitive world of English football’s second tier. It is this very competitiveness, and also the fantastic crowds that flock to the league, which in terms of attendances is right up there with many other European countries top flights, that means that the Championship is always good value for entertainment (if less so with many clubs exorbitant ticket prices...).

In a modern football world where we can often draw up the likely league table before a ball has even been kicked, the Championship’s largely unpredictable nature is a welcome throwback to the days when anyone could win the league and everyone could be vulnerable to the drop.
With the new Championship season just five days away, check back over the next few days, for a comprehensive preview of the teams and players to watch out for...and then laugh as we get it hilariously wrong over the next 10 months or so.