Championship 2025/26 Season

[filbertway]

On 07/12/2025 at 12:48, BKLFox said:

Why is it constantly rolled out that this league is so god damn awful, surely the words competitive otherwise why do we also hear the championship is the hardest league to get out of?

Just because it’s deemed we are shite but yet still closer to the top than the bottom it’s assumed the whole league is shite, would it not be shite if there were 4 clubs so far ahead that teams 5 to 24 can’t catch them much like the premier league, would that make it a better league?

The Championship is the 5th most watched league in the world I believe and it’s because of the unpredictably of it that makes it so, not because it’s shite.

Competitive is the correct word, lots of teams taking points off each other. The logic seems to be that the league is only good if 3 teams are running away with it, otherwise the league is "awful" if it's somewhat level and teams are able to take points off each other.

[LCFCCKEANO]

4 hours ago, filbertway said:

Competitive is the correct word, lots of teams taking points off each other. The logic seems to be that the league is only good if 3 teams are running away with it, otherwise the league is "awful" if it's somewhat level and teams are able to take points off each other.

This all over. In the two years since we were last here the recruitment is so so much better, so many examples of that in the summer, so much more creativity. Teams are realising the best value is in Scandinavia/Eastern Europe and there has been a crazy influx, the league is so much better than it was

[iancognito]

On 07/12/2025 at 12:48, BKLFox said:

Why is it constantly rolled out that this league is so god damn awful, surely the words competitive otherwise why do we also hear the championship is the hardest league to get out of?

Just because it’s deemed we are shite but yet still closer to the top than the bottom it’s assumed the whole league is shite, would it not be shite if there were 4 clubs so far ahead that teams 5 to 24 can’t catch them much like the premier league, would that make it a better league?

The Championship is the 5th most watched league in the world I believe and it’s because of the unpredictably of it that makes it so, not because it’s shite.

It is awful. The finishing, the defending, the "patterns" of play, the unfit owners, the EFL governance running the thing like a home made lemonade stall. The competitiveness and unpredictability isn't a selling point, it shows how bang average the standard is. Even when we ran away with is under Maresca in those first 3 or 4 months, there were half a dozen games where we should have lost but the strikers we faced missed sitters, open goals and one on ones. 

4 hours ago, LCFCCKEANO said:

This all over. In the two years since we were last here the recruitment is so so much better, so many examples of that in the summer, so much more creativity. Teams are realising the best value is in Scandinavia/Eastern Europe and there has been a crazy influx, the league is so much better than it was

It really isn't, classic recency bias. I don't know what recruitment has been better, the same Premier League has-beens and lower league never-will-be's still ply their trade in the Championship. The 90s with all those classic play off finals was a golden era for this league. The Sunderlands, Blackburns, Pompeys etc of that era would walk this league now just as they did then.

[Ric Flair]

12 hours ago, filbertway said:

Competitive is the correct word, lots of teams taking points off each other. The logic seems to be that the league is only good if 3 teams are running away with it, otherwise the league is "awful" if it's somewhat level and teams are able to take points off each other.

Competitive does not mean the standard is high though. Thats like getting 24 pot bellied lads to bollock 20 pints each and have a wrestle and then declare it a bloody good test, as 3 hours later they're all still waddling about confused with no clear winner. 

 

This is why I repeat myself constantly about getting our house in order before aspirations of going up. The gulf between the two leagues is vast, it's surprised me just how much it grew over a few years and there's little point us scrapping promotion and being so ill equipped to compete. Get that seismic change at this club, with a clear long term model and build to take a young and talented side built on one of the best academies in the country and clever scouting model and we can make massive gains again.

[Dan]

Wrexham have seriously got to grips with this league. Can see them pushing to go up next year.

[Super_horns]

Bad news for Oxford and their fans tonight .

 

Rain in Blackburn all day ..

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/2655524

[Les-TA-Jon]

Luckily our fixture at Blackburn is in May

[LCFCJohn]

1 hour ago, Super_horns said:

Bad news for Oxford and their fans tonight .

 

Rain in Blackburn all day ..

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/2655524

No point travelling for them really…

[LCFCCKEANO]

5 hours ago, iancognito said:

It is awful. The finishing, the defending, the "patterns" of play, the unfit owners, the EFL governance running the thing like a home made lemonade stall. The competitiveness and unpredictability isn't a selling point, it shows how bang average the standard is. Even when we ran away with is under Maresca in those first 3 or 4 months, there were half a dozen games where we should have lost but the strikers we faced missed sitters, open goals and one on ones. 

It really isn't, classic recency bias. I don't know what recruitment has been better, the same Premier League has-beens and lower league never-will-be's still ply their trade in the Championship. The 90s with all those classic play off finals was a golden era for this league. The Sunderlands, Blackburns, Pompeys etc of that era would walk this league now just as they did then.

I could give a good few examples of recent patterns of purchases, going back 2/3 years which I think we are now seeing the product of- Ivanovic at Millwall, Heggebo at West Brom, Irankunda at Watford, Vipotnik at Swansea all having massive impacts, and you have prem teams letting better players leave as more money arrives, such as Crama, and have better players at worse teams, as an example, two of Ipswich most impactful attackers last time we went up are now at Wrexham and Portsmouth. And the relegated clubs have done way better business, and two of the promoted sides are immediately as rich as anyone in the lower prem- last time it was Oxford, Plymouth and Ipswich(Charlton as the other are lower mid table and clearly better than Plymouth or Oxford were). Check my posts, last time we were here I said it was crap because it was. I think you are more willing to bash the league to further undermine what a crap year we have had which is unnecessary as both can be true, we should still be doing better than we are

[Bourbon Fox]

3 hours ago, Ric Flair said:

This is why I repeat myself constantly about getting our house in order before aspirations of going up. The gulf between the two leagues is vast

Maresca told us this, and it's not just money or players. It's the whole setup in the offices, the various departments, the academy and the board. Everything has to have the elite mindset and we are so far off that.

 

Analysts, scouts, sports scientists - we've had so many staff leave in recent years and who is appointing the new ones, according to what vision?

[kenny]

10 minutes ago, Bourbon Fox said:

Maresca told us this, and it's not just money or players. It's the whole setup in the offices, the various departments, the academy and the board. Everything has to have the elite mindset and we are so far off that.

 

Analysts, scouts, sports scientists - we've had so many staff leave in recent years and who is appointing the new ones, according to what vision?

When people on here complain about Seagrave I think of the above.

 

We have built elite level facilities which is the right thing to do at the time, more so than the stadium.

 

We haven't then filled it with an elite level mentality in terms of the staffing. As such, we have created the players hotel, spa and golf course and wonder why they are pampered.

 

 

[filbertway]

4 hours ago, Ric Flair said:

Competitive does not mean the standard is high though. Thats like getting 24 pot bellied lads to bollock 20 pints each and have a wrestle and then declare it a bloody good test, as 3 hours later they're all still waddling about confused with no clear winner. 

 

This is why I repeat myself constantly about getting our house in order before aspirations of going up. The gulf between the two leagues is vast, it's surprised me just how much it grew over a few years and there's little point us scrapping promotion and being so ill equipped to compete. Get that seismic change at this club, with a clear long term model and build to take a young and talented side built on one of the best academies in the country and clever scouting model and we can make massive gains again.

 

It's high enough to make 3 teams with huge budgets at this level look fairly average. It's all relative though isn't it, if you're comparing this league to mid table teams in the league above then yes, it's worse. If you're comparing it to league one, then it's better. We're not a Premier league team though, so this very clearly our level atm. Saying the league is poor is just another way of saying "i'm not ready to accept the reality of our situation" to me  

 

For a team that's spending, what? £40-45m a year on wages at this level, we should be better than the majority of teams. Obviously we know the reality is that we're vastly overpaying a lot of players that don't look better than this level though.

 

Somewhat agree with the sentiments. Although there's it's a lot easier to put together than elite set up when you're in the Prem. If we do somehow manage to sneak up in the play offs, then the opportunity has to be taken to put together a young team with a point to prove. If we drop again then you're ideally in a position where most will stay and should be capable of bringing you back up.

 

if we don't go up this year, it gets a lot worse before it gets better. Assuming the people running the club continue to perform at the level they've shown so far anyway.

 

Whatever we do, the plans should be consistently looking at the next 5 years, our thinking seems to be about the next 12 months at best and just leads to awful decisions to "solve" a problem despite the quite clear consequences that will come in the future (often we don't even solve the problem). We're currently seeing where that kind of thinking lands you.

[Fox92]

2 hours ago, Super_horns said:

Bad news for Oxford and their fans tonight .

 

Rain in Blackburn all day ..

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/2655524

But I thought Ipswich were the lucky ones!?

 

Quite clearly an issue with Blackburn at this point they deserved to lose the rearranged game. Three times in a season is ridiculous, I would imagine the league will start punishing them soon.

[AjcW]

1 minute ago, Fox92 said:

But I thought Ipswich were the lucky ones!?

 

Quite clearly an issue with Blackburn at this point they deserved to lose the rearranged game. Three times in a season is ridiculous, I would imagine the league will start punishing them soon.

Saw one of their fans saying the ground has drainage.... but the drain goes into an overflowing river outside... so essentially backs up on itself  

[BKLFox]

Only 3 teams in the premier league have won more than half their games played so far, only 3 teams in the championship have won more than half their games played so far, premier must be poor also?
When did you last watch a premier league match & thought that was pure silk like it is from a screen (FIFA) from both teams & what was the final score?

How often during Enzo's season did posters say i much prefer the championship where the general standard was better & more exciting as bottom could beat top unlike the closed division above.
How often have we heard that Man U are absolute pony & a laughing stock of a club then beat a team that only has 2pts so far to move into 6th themselves?

How often have we read in the Premier thread this season how boring virtually every game has been.

If the championship is of such poor quality what's the point of Lges 1,2 & beyond, why do managers try to cut their teeth if they have poor ideas.

Are 10 teams in the championship so far away from 10 teams in the premier league in terms of match-2-match quality, i honestly can't remember when i was wow'd by a premier league game, not even the so called mouth watering top of the table clashes are edge of the seat stuff.

Footballs a simple game I think half the problem, away from our own performances, is that people live second by second during a match, how many tuts do you hear on every-&-any game just because a player mis-controlled, a pass wasn't a direct arrow to another player or the shot wasn't hit with such precision that every shot resulted in a goal.
Games arn't played on a screen, mistakes happen & thats probably what leads to 90%+ of goals  in some degree, in any league anyway. If teams were perfect games would be either 10+ all or nil nil 

[AjcW]

50 minutes ago, BKLFox said:

When did you last watch a premier league match & thought that was pure silk like it is from a screen (FIFA) from both teams & what was the final score?
 

Picked this out as the rest of it was too long  

 

The last game that I felt was like this was Arsenal Bayern in the Champions League a few weeks back, seems to bring out the highest quality at the minute that competition.

[Fox92]

1 minute ago, AjcW said:

Picked this out as the rest of it was too long  

 

The last game that I felt was like this was Arsenal Bayern in the Champions League a few weeks back, seems to bring out the highest quality at the minute that competition.

Real Madrid v Manchester City this week as well, might be another game of quality.

[AjcW]

3 minutes ago, Fox92 said:

Real Madrid v Manchester City this week as well, might be another game of quality.

Sounds like it might be Xabi's last too!

[Ric Flair]

1 hour ago, BKLFox said:

Only 3 teams in the premier league have won more than half their games played so far, only 3 teams in the championship have won more than half their games played so far, premier must be poor also?
When did you last watch a premier league match & thought that was pure silk like it is from a screen (FIFA) from both teams & what was the final score?

How often during Enzo's season did posters say i much prefer the championship where the general standard was better & more exciting as bottom could beat top unlike the closed division above.
How often have we heard that Man U are absolute pony & a laughing stock of a club then beat a team that only has 2pts so far to move into 6th themselves?

How often have we read in the Premier thread this season how boring virtually every game has been.

If the championship is of such poor quality what's the point of Lges 1,2 & beyond, why do managers try to cut their teeth if they have poor ideas.

Are 10 teams in the championship so far away from 10 teams in the premier league in terms of match-2-match quality, i honestly can't remember when i was wow'd by a premier league game, not even the so called mouth watering top of the table clashes are edge of the seat stuff.

Footballs a simple game I think half the problem, away from our own performances, is that people live second by second during a match, how many tuts do you hear on every-&-any game just because a player mis-controlled, a pass wasn't a direct arrow to another player or the shot wasn't hit with such precision that every shot resulted in a goal.
Games arn't played on a screen, mistakes happen & thats probably what leads to 90%+ of goals  in some degree, in any league anyway. If teams were perfect games would be either 10+ all or nil nil 

Are you genuinely trying to make a case for we aren't that bad? Christ alive.

[MPH]

7 hours ago, Dan said:

Wrexham have seriously got to grips with this league. Can see them pushing to go up next year.

 

that was they plan when promoted. They have themselves a 2 year plan to get promoted to the premier league.

[Bourbon Fox]

13 minutes ago, MPH said:

 

that was they plan when promoted. They have themselves a 2 year plan to get promoted to the premier league.

They've just sold a minority stake too, it will fund their ground development but you can bet they'll spend big if they're within touching distance in January.

 

I hope they don't have designs on our incredible Zambian striker 

Edited 9 December 2025 by Bourbon Fox

[when_you're_smiling]

17 minutes ago, Bourbon Fox said:

They've just sold a minority stake too, it will fund their ground development but you can bet they'll spend big if they're within touching distance in January.

 

I hope they don't have designs on our incredible Zambian striker 

Haven’t they just got £14m from the Welsh government to pay for the new stadium? 

[Bourbon Fox]

1 hour ago, when_you're_smiling said:

Haven’t they just got £14m from the Welsh government to pay for the new stadium? 

Yep, they are playing the game

[AjcW]

9 hours ago, Dan said:

Wrexham have seriously got to grips with this league. Can see them pushing to go up next year.

Do you think Parkinson is a good manager? I've been musing about this a fair bit with a friend of mine. 

In every other league their squad has been a league above its level. But now in the Championship you'd say they have a very average squad that's probably punching above its weight (I know they're paying big and have signed good experience but it's not like they've signed people from the Premier League who have no right being in the champ)

 

Was looking back at his stats career and you'd argue he's done pretty well everywhere he's been football league wise. Hull aside.....  

 

[Dan]

37 minutes ago, AjcW said:

Do you think Parkinson is a good manager? I've been musing about this a fair bit with a friend of mine. 

In every other league their squad has been a league above its level. But now in the Championship you'd say they have a very average squad that's probably punching above its weight (I know they're paying big and have signed good experience but it's not like they've signed people from the Premier League who have no right being in the champ)

 

Was looking back at his stats career and you'd argue he's done pretty well everywhere he's been football league wise. Hull aside.....  

It's hard to argue with his record really. Always been the impression they're waiting to upgrade on him but he does seem to keep getting the job done for them. I thought he'd possibly get exposed a bit in this league but it hasn't happened. I'm still not quite sure I could imagine him in the Premier League though.

 

They will spend again next year and push. They looked dreadful when they first came up. Dropped Ward & Coady and the rest follows  

 

You can see them signing James in the summer which would be infuriating.