Heavily Weakened Championship

[Geo V]

I'm not sure if we had the same level of transfer deals out of the Championship last season but there seems to be an awful lot of the leagues best players already punted out with maybe a few more to come. Bouazza at Watford has been the latest quality player to leave the Championship with only average replacements being made. With this new money within the Premiership is seems clear that even the average clubs like Fulham and Wigan can through the cheque book at bringing players in and if that means they have to pay OTT for Championship players, then so be it!

Ive compiled a list of the good players that each club has lost this summer which in my opinion strengthens our chances as we are only one of a few clubs to have actually strengthened their squads from last season. Ive highlighted the players who have left for the Premiership.

Barnsley - They haven't many decent players but lost arguably there best player in Nardiello to QPR on a free - No real interesting deals in so their squad is largely the same.

Blackpool - Again quite an average squad with no major transfer coups for them. Squad arguably weaker than last season.

Bristol City - Have improved things with £1m man Trundle from Swansea, Michael McIndoe from Wolves and Ivan Sproule from Hibs but they weren't that good last season in a lower league so have it all to do to compete.

Burnley - Added Robbie Blake and Kiraly from Palace along with Stephen Jordan from Man City on a free. No real deal shakers here and another squad that is largely unaltered.

Cardiff - They sold there best player in Chopra to Sunderland for £5m or so but have done OK in their recruitment drive with the free additions of some good players in Robbie Fowler, Capaldi from Plymouth, MacLean from Sheff Weds, Trevor Sinclair from Man City and Gavin Rae from Rangers. Definite improvements made so one of the few who are better for it.

Charlton - Raised over £20m in the sales of Darren Bent to Spurs, Luke Young to Middlesbro, Dennis Rommedahl to Ajax, Hermann Hreidarsson to Portsmouth as well as the loan return of Scott Carson to Liverpool. The likes of Kisha left for us along with Bryan Hughes to Hull, El Karkori to Qatar and Hasselbaink left the club. They have made quite a few high risk signings in McLeod from MK Dons, Todorov from Pompey, Paddy Mac from us was a silly fee and Dean Sinclair from Barnet. They managed to grab Nicky weaver on a free from Man City who had a good season last time around and Chris Iwelumo from Colchester. There big signing was Luke Varney but again that was from the lower leagues so they have hardly signed ready made class for the quality they have let go. Heavily weaken squad IMO.

Colchester - They sold their two 20+ goals scorers of last year in Iwelumo to Charlton and Cureton to Norwich and replaced them with the old boy that is Teddy Sherringham and Clive Platt from MK Dons. Another weakened squad.

Coventry - Much was made about these a few months ago and I expected them to go on a spending spree but it hasnt materialised. They have added a few decent freebies in Konstantopoulos from Hartlepool, Julian Gray from Brum and Leon Best from Soton and have done OK in clearing some of the muck out like Don Hutchison, Fadiga and Colin Cameron but all in all, there deals have been less than inspiring.

Crystal Palace - Nothing happening here at all. A few lower league signings and a few players out but another samey or even weaken squad for me.

Hull - Touted as another ambitious club in the division with big plans but have added Richard Garcia from Colchester, Bryan Hughes from Charlton and Dean Windass from Bradford. Some much was sold or released like Ray Parlour. Hardly any change here.

Ipswich - Re-signed Pablo Counago from Malaga (which in Greek means W**ker BTW ), and a decent keeper in Alexander from Cardiff. Lost Lewis Price to Derby but all in all, failed in quite a few transfer targets like Franny Jeffers and havent set the transfer scene alight at all.

Leicester - I wont bore you with the stuff you already know but we had added some real quality in Clem, Kish, N`Gotty, Kaebi, Chambers and DJ and have drastically improved our squad with the promise of more players to come.

Norwich - Dickson Etuhu left for Sunderland for £1.5m and was followed out of the club by Robert Earnshaw to Derby for £3.5m. They have managed a few astute signings in Jon Otsemobor on a Bosman from Crewe with former player Jamie Cureton from Colchester in addition to making the deal for Marshall from Celtic a permanent one buta ll in all, the squad is weaker than last time around.

Plymouth - Lost Capaldi on a free to Wolves and Aljofree to Swindon. Added McVeigh. Another weakened first team and squad.

Preston - One of those clubs who rely on one or two players and having sold Nugent to Portsmouth for £6m, they look like struggling this season. They have replaced him with the bosman signing of Karl Hawley from Carlisle and also added a good Bosman signing in Billy Jones from Crewe. Still, Nugent hasnt and almost cant be replaced so I see these failing to live up to last seasons high standards.

Sheffield Utd - Sold Claude Davis to Derby for £3m, Phil Jagielka to Everton for £4m and Colin Kazim-Richards to Turkish side Fenerbahce for £1,275,000. They have spent well though and added James Beattie from Everton for £4m which is a good deal persuading him down to this level and he followed his team mate and Scottish International Gary Naysmith to the club for £1m. They re-signed Billy Sharp from S****horpe who looked an extremely good player and added the freebie that we and others wanted in Lee Hendrie from Villa who may be a pain in the backside but is very good at this level. You could argue that there squad is as good as or if not better than last season but lets see how they respond without Davis, Jagielka and the moany old ex-manager of theres in Neil Warnock.

QPR - They will be hurting after losing Lee Cook to Fulham for £2.5m and to a lesser extent fans favourite Marc Bircham but John Gregory is a decent manager who has made some shrewd signings. Lee Camp from Derby for £300k is a very good deal as is Nardiello from Barnsley on a free. The best signings are arguably the loan deals though. Defender Michael Mancienne recently signed a new 4 year deal with Chelski but has returned to QPR on loan with the best loan signing of the summer for me, Ben Sahar. Sahar has featured in the Full International team for Israel in recent times and looks a real handful. Gregory has also managed to ship out quite a bit of dead wood and taken some chances on the likes of Stefan Moore and John Curtis but the squad has improved nicely although they may be too far behind to actually compete at the top end of the table.

S****horpe - Face an uphill task this season having lost Billy Sharp and they also have been unable to seal a deal for the succesful loan player of last year, Leeds` . They have failed to recruit anyone of note who has a proven track record at this level and have thus weaken there squad.

Sheff Weds - Nothing really happening here. After bidding for both Billy Sharp and Freddy Eastwood a while back, I thought that they had somehow come into some money and wanted to really go for it this summer but they missed out on that pair and lost MacLean to Cardiff on a free. They havent added anyone of note so another squad weakened.

Southampton - They seem to be leaking players at the moment. Gareth Bale went to Spurs for £10m, Baird went to Fulham for £3m, they just sold Pele ( not that one) to WBA for £1m in addition to Leon Best going to Cov on a Bosman. Highly rated Martin Cranie left for bitter rivals Pompey too. Gregory Vignal has signed from Lens but not much else has followed. They are drastically weaker for this season.

Stoke - Sold Carl Hoefkens to WBA for about £750k and lost out in securing on loan player Lee Hendrie. Nothing much added apart from Richard Cresswell from Leeds and the loan deal that sees Sunderlands defender Stephen Wright join but they are basically the same if not weaker.

Watford - They werent much good last season and got worse when Villa grabbed Aheley Young from them. In pre-season they lost Chambers to us and they wanted to keep him and Bouazza has signed for Fulham for £4m.

WBA- They are trying to fill the huge voids within their squad left after the sales of influential players Paul McShane to Sunderland for £1.5m, Jason Koumas to Wigan for £5.3m and the sale of Diomansy Kamara to Fulham but the likes of Celtics Craig Beattie and WBA`s Carl Hoefkens fall woefully short of what they need. They are already heavily weakened and it looks like Curtis Davies and Paul Robinson will be next out of the door soon.

Wolves - They have recruited well in the summer with the acquisition of Freddy Eastwood from Southend, Jarvis from the Gills and Stephen Elliot from Sunderland in addition to Palaces Darren Ward and didn't lose too much strength from the first team apart from bit part platers Carl Cort and Michael McIndoe so they should be better for it.

BTW I`ll apologize in advance for missing out players but Ive gathered the info from BBC, Sportling Life and the weird Sky Sports site who have us down as having sold Geoff Horsefield for £1.2m this summer .

All aboard the optimistic bus again??

[Flynny]

Missed De Zeeuw from Cov. Pretty good signing for them.

[Geo V]

Missed De Zeeuw from Cov. Pretty good signing for them.

That`ll be the first of many then .

[Stevosevic]

Definetely a weaker division than last year.

[morris1234]

I'm not sure if we had the same level of transfer deals out of the Championship last season but there seems to be an awful lot of the leagues best players already punted out with maybe a few more to come. Bouazza at Watford has been the latest quality player to leave the Championship with only average replacements being made. With this new money within the Premiership is seems clear that even the average clubs like Fulham and Wigan can through the cheque book at bringing players in and if that means they have to pay OTT for Championship players, then so be it!

Ive compiled a list of the good players that each club has lost this summer which in my opinion strengthens our chances as we are only one of a few clubs to have actually strengthened their squads from last season. Ive highlighted the players who have left for the Premiership.

Barnsley - They haven't many decent players but lost arguably there best player in Nardiello to QPR on a free - No real interesting deals in so their squad is largely the same.

Blackpool - Again quite an average squad with no major transfer coups for them. Squad arguably weaker than last season.

Bristol City - Have improved things with £1m man Trundle from Swansea, Michael McIndoe from Wolves and Ivan Sproule from Hibs but they weren't that good last season in a lower league so have it all to do to compete.

Burnley - Added Robbie Blake and Kiraly from Palace along with Stephen Jordan from Man City on a free. No real deal shakers here and another squad that is largely unaltered.

Cardiff - They sold there best player in Chopra to Sunderland for £5m or so but have done OK in their recruitment drive with the free additions of some good players in Robbie Fowler, Capaldi from Plymouth, MacLean from Sheff Weds, Trevor Sinclair from Man City and Gavin Rae from Rangers. Definite improvements made so one of the few who are better for it.

Charlton - Raised over £20m in the sales of Darren Bent to Spurs, Luke Young to Middlesbro, Dennis Rommedahl to Ajax, Hermann Hreidarsson to Portsmouth as well as the loan return of Scott Carson to Liverpool. The likes of Kisha left for us along with Bryan Hughes to Hull, El Karkori to Qatar and Hasselbaink left the club. They have made quite a few high risk signings in McLeod from MK Dons, Todorov from Pompey, Paddy Mac from us was a silly fee and Dean Sinclair from Barnet. They managed to grab Nicky weaver on a free from Man City who had a good season last time around and Chris Iwelumo from Colchester. There big signing was Luke Varney but again that was from the lower leagues so they have hardly signed ready made class for the quality they have let go. Heavily weaken squad IMO.

Colchester - They sold their two 20+ goals scorers of last year in Iwelumo to Charlton and Cureton to Norwich and replaced them with the old boy that is Teddy Sherringham and Clive Platt from MK Dons. Another weakened squad.

Coventry - Much was made about these a few months ago and I expected them to go on a spending spree but it hasnt materialised. They have added a few decent freebies in Konstantopoulos from Hartlepool, Julian Gray from Brum and Leon Best from Soton and have done OK in clearing some of the muck out like Don Hutchison, Fadiga and Colin Cameron but all in all, there deals have been less than inspiring.

Crystal Palace - Nothing happening here at all. A few lower league signings and a few players out but another samey or even weaken squad for me.

Hull - Touted as another ambitious club in the division with big plans but have added Richard Garcia from Colchester, Bryan Hughes from Charlton and Dean Windass from Bradford. Some much was sold or released like Ray Parlour. Hardly any change here.

Ipswich - Re-signed Pablo Counago from Malaga (which in Greek means W**ker BTW ), and a decent keeper in Alexander from Cardiff. Lost Lewis Price to Derby but all in all, failed in quite a few transfer targets like Franny Jeffers and havent set the transfer scene alight at all.

Leicester - I wont bore you with the stuff you already know but we had added some real quality in Clem, Kish, N`Gotty, Kaebi, Chambers and DJ and have drastically improved our squad with the promise of more players to come.

Norwich - Dickson Etuhu left for Sunderland for £1.5m and was followed out of the club by Robert Earnshaw to Derby for £3.5m. They have managed a few astute signings in Jon Otsemobor on a Bosman from Crewe with former player Jamie Cureton from Colchester in addition to making the deal for Marshall from Celtic a permanent one buta ll in all, the squad is weaker than last time around.

Plymouth - Lost Capaldi on a free to Wolves and Aljofree to Swindon. Added McVeigh. Another weakened first team and squad.

Preston - One of those clubs who rely on one or two players and having sold Nugent to Portsmouth for £6m, they look like struggling this season. They have replaced him with the bosman signing of Karl Hawley from Carlisle and also added a good Bosman signing in Billy Jones from Crewe. Still, Nugent hasnt and almost cant be replaced so I see these failing to live up to last seasons high standards.

Sheffield Utd - Sold Claude Davis to Derby for £3m, Phil Jagielka to Everton for £4m and Colin Kazim-Richards to Turkish side Fenerbahce for £1,275,000. They have spent well though and added James Beattie from Everton for £4m which is a good deal persuading him down to this level and he followed his team mate and Scottish International Gary Naysmith to the club for £1m. They re-signed Billy Sharp from S****horpe who looked an extremely good player and added the freebie that we and others wanted in Lee Hendrie from Villa who may be a pain in the backside but is very good at this level. You could argue that there squad is as good as or if not better than last season but lets see how they respond without Davis, Jagielka and the moany old ex-manager of theres in Neil Warnock.

QPR - They will be hurting after losing Lee Cook to Fulham for £2.5m and to a lesser extent fans favourite Marc Bircham but John Gregory is a decent manager who has made some shrewd signings. Lee Camp from Derby for £300k is a very good deal as is Nardiello from Barnsley on a free. The best signings are arguably the loan deals though. Defender Michael Mancienne recently signed a new 4 year deal with Chelski but has returned to QPR on loan with the best loan signing of the summer for me, Ben Sahar. Sahar has featured in the Full International team for Israel in recent times and looks a real handful. Gregory has also managed to ship out quite a bit of dead wood and taken some chances on the likes of Stefan Moore and John Curtis but the squad has improved nicely although they may be too far behind to actually compete at the top end of the table.

S****horpe - Face an uphill task this season having lost Billy Sharp and they also have been unable to seal a deal for the succesful loan player of last year, Leeds` . They have failed to recruit anyone of note who has a proven track record at this level and have thus weaken there squad.

Sheff Weds - Nothing really happening here. After bidding for both Billy Sharp and Freddy Eastwood a while back, I thought that they had somehow come into some money and wanted to really go for it this summer but they missed out on that pair and lost MacLean to Cardiff on a free. They havent added anyone of note so another squad weakened.

Southampton - They seem to be leaking players at the moment. Gareth Bale went to Spurs for £10m, Baird went to Fulham for £3m, they just sold Pele ( not that one) to WBA for £1m in addition to Leon Best going to Cov on a Bosman. Highly rated Martin Cranie left for bitter rivals Pompey too. Gregory Vignal has signed from Lens but not much else has followed. They are drastically weaker for this season.

Stoke - Sold Carl Hoefkens to WBA for about £750k and lost out in securing on loan player Lee Hendrie. Nothing much added apart from Richard Cresswell from Leeds and the loan deal that sees Sunderlands defender Stephen Wright join but they are basically the same if not weaker.

Watford - They werent much good last season and got worse when Villa grabbed Aheley Young from them. In pre-season they lost Chambers to us and they wanted to keep him and Bouazza has signed for Fulham for £4m.

WBA- They are trying to fill the huge voids within their squad left after the sales of influential players Paul McShane to Sunderland for £1.5m, Jason Koumas to Wigan for £5.3m and the sale of Diomansy Kamara to Fulham but the likes of Celtics Craig Beattie and WBA`s Carl Hoefkens fall woefully short of what they need. They are already heavily weakened and it looks like Curtis Davies and Paul Robinson will be next out of the door soon.

Wolves - They have recruited well in the summer with the acquisition of Freddy Eastwood from Southend, Jarvis from the Gills and Stephen Elliot from Sunderland in addition to Palaces Darren Ward and didn't lose too much strength from the first team apart from bit part platers Carl Cort and Michael McIndoe so they should be better for it.

BTW I`ll apologize in advance for missing out players but Ive gathered the info from BBC, Sportling Life and the weird Sky Sports site who have us down as having sold Geoff Horsefield for £1.2m this summer .

All aboard the optimistic bus again??

great post!!

[Fez of Mahrez]

I don't think it's significantly weakened at all. The clubs aiming for the top six are stronger than last year if you ask me.

[Geo V]

I don't think it's significantly weakened at all. The clubs aiming for the top six are stronger than last year if you ask me.

Charlton, Watford and WBA stronger than last season??? Where??

[Fez of Mahrez]

Charlton and WBA stronger than last season??? Where??

Erm. Charlton and Watford weren't in the Championship last year.

WBA may seem weakened but for all their big names last season they didn't get promoted. They have signed one or two quality players and they will still be aiming for the top six.

[DB11]

I'd agree that on paper it looks weaker but it's stronger in terms of financial standings.

[Manwell Pablo]

Erm. Charlton and Watford weren't in the Championship last year.

WBA may seem weakened but for all their big names last season they didn't get promoted. They have signed one or two quality players and they will still be aiming for the top six.

I think he's attempting to say Charlton are weaker than Birmingham, Watford are weaker than Derby etc.

He has a slight point. I think it's more the fact that we've got better that makes the division less daunting more than anything else.

[Fez of Mahrez]

I think he's attempting to say Charlton are weaker than Birmingham, Watford are weaker than Derby etc.

He has a slight point. I think it's more the fact that we've got better that makes the division less daunting more than anything else.

That's probably what he should be trying to say but he hasn't. I think the sides that have come down are better than the squads that last year's promoted teams started off with personally anyway.

[Dr The Singh]

I think he's attempting to say Charlton are weaker than Birmingham, Watford are weaker than Derby etc.

He has a slight point. I think it's more the fact that we've got better that makes the division less daunting more than anything else.

Agreed, we have a better chance, I personally think the division is stronger but so are we!!

[General Smuts]

Not sure if weaker will mean more competitive though, but it does look positive for both us, sheff utd and Wolves as we are the only 3 big clubs to have made any improvements.

[STUHILL]

I think the weaker teams from last year have got weaker but the stronger teams like Wolves, WBA and the teams dropped down will be stronger again! I think we will really struggle to break the top 6 pack as I think they will all be very hard to beat. It won't be 'anyone can beat anyone' league anymore, with the top 6 widening the gap with the poorer teams! There always seems to be a slot for a wildcard though, and i'm hoping it is us!

[Geo V]

Erm. Charlton and Watford weren't in the Championship last year.

WBA may seem weakened but for all their big names last season they didn't get promoted. They have signed one or two quality players and they will still be aiming for the top six.

Towards the end of last season, some of us were worried that the likes of West Ham would be coming down to this division and almost certainly secure one of the promotion places. Thank god they stayed up and the teams who have been relegated weren't all that anyway and are substantially weaker for this season IMO than they were last season. If you add to that quite a few of the others sides who finished up there last season are substantially weakened, especially Southampton and WBA, then IMO the division is weaker.

When starting the thread I did mention that we should be a lot more optimistic due to most squads either stagnating or being weakened whilst ours has improved substantially. Even sides like Colchester and Preston who ended up as top 10 sides have weaken quite a bit and should not prove to be as dangerous as last season. All in all we should be extremely hopeful of a top ten finish at least.

[Raj]

All aboard the optimistic bus again??

Some good work went into that eh Geo..well done

Lost track of the Optimistic bus.....Is it still around!!!

[Webbo]

<Well researched, excellent post>

Very interesting reading.

All aboard the optimistic bus again??

Get me a ticket.

[Raj]

Some good work went into that eh Geo..well done

Lost track of the Optimistic bus.....Is it still around!!!

Very interesting reading.

Get me a ticket.

Where's that effing bus gone???

[dandannieldanok]

I personally think the top teams in the division are stronger this year, like Fez said.

[Bluefoxtim]

Bloomin 'eck how long did it take to write that?

You would have been p*ssed off if you had pressed the backspace key by mistake

[J.Lisemore]

Missed De Zeeuw from Cov. Pretty good signing for them.

hes just old and sad for joining such an awful club

[BartonFox]

Still places us mid table though as we do not possess a left hand side or a goalkeeper just as we have not since 2005.

Love the optimism, just don't come on here shouting the odds when we ain't 9 points clear after Saturday.

[Chairman of the Bored]

Still places us mid table though as we do not possess a left hand side or a goalkeeper just as we have not since 2005.

Love the optimism, just don't come on here shouting the odds when we ain't 9 points clear after Saturday.

I'd settle for 8 pts clear to be honest.

[Geo V]

Bloomin 'eck how long did it take to write that?

You would have been p*ssed off if you had pressed the backspace key by mistake

Too bloody long

One thing about the origiinal post I made, it wasn't only aimed at the big clubs. I did mention that some of the other middle-of-the-road clubs have weakened there side by losing there better players which IMO has made the division easier than before.

Raj and the rest, the optimistic bus has just come back from the Playboy mansion after The Heff was so impressed by our positive thinking that he invited us all over to pork some blonde American lasses with Chebs to die for. We`ll all be back in Leicester tomorrow in time for the game, all tanned and with a spring in our step that only the mansion can give a man! I would also like to point out that if MDV and Elvis are named as our strikers tomorrow, we`ll still be boarding the bus after the game, regardless of the result.

[He's not bald]

Still places us mid table though as we do not possess a left hand side or a goalkeeper just as we have not since 2005.

Love the optimism, just don't come on here shouting the odds when we ain't 9 points clear after Saturday.

Look in the bright side,every team in league 1 will be at least 12 points clear of Leeds come 5pm tomorrow!