The Championship 2020-21

It's been very entertaining in patches, more so than anything we experienced in most of our Prem seasons, but on the flip side desperately trying to grind out wins against sub-standard opposition for much of the season wasn't too much fun

 

Obviously I'd love us to stay up, but can we afford to bank on it? Trying to stay up could cost a lot, are we better off with cheap punts, then if we do go down we're in a position like Norwich to cushion the blow with parachute payments?

 

There are a lot of games where entertainment is definitely not the word I would use.

 

It was nice to win more than about ten games during the entire season. Very nice in fact. The Champ had that going for it. Not much else though IMO.

 

Thank God the relegation race is going down to the final day, because other than that, it's been the drabbest season ever of what is usually the most exciting league in the world

 

In terms of the regular season, yes I agree. The playoffs should be fun though hopefully.

 

Play-offs? What play-offs?

 

Aka the tinpot trophy

 

The playoffs are always a great watch no matter what league it is, looking forward to them. Especially if Bournemouth fail miserably. I honestly hope they lose to a last minute Swansea penalty after a dive and then fall into financial oblivion.

 

I agree with others, this has been a poor Championship.

It’s not so much the lack of goals, it’s the fact that it hasn’t had that competitiveness that has earned the Championship’s reputation as the most exciting league in the world. (2012-13 and 2014-15 were good examples of how entertaining this division can be.) Title, automatics and play-offs decided early, and a team is going to stay up with a low points total (if Wednesday achieve their “great escape”, it’s only because two teams have been on shocking runs after they themselves have woefully failed to take advantage of an easy run of fixtures since their hammering of Cardiff). Occasionally we’ve had some shock results and magical weekends where everything has gone our way, but all too often the midtable and bottom teams have been beaten comfortably by the promotion chasers.

On top of that, the low standard of the chasing pack - Stoke, Blackburn and Bristol City who were expected by many to challenge at least for the last play-off place have been very disappointing.

 

Hasn’t disappointed me....just means they’ve helped us get the job done. I have also found a lot of the Prem games pretty nothing, so whilst we know we’ve got our work cut out, it’s not as if we’ve been promoted into a division tempered by a season of cutting-edge competition.

 

Empty stadiums probably account for most of that. Almost every match in every league I've seen has been similarly undercooked.

 

Standards have been up and down in every division. The premier league has been as dull as it always is but the championship has still been a great watch and has a competitive edge. League one has been great as well in seeing who has been in and out of the top 6.

 

Easy to pick the fun stuff, but as discussed with therapists, i am too negative… so true to from here is -

Top 5 worst games of the season (all away from home)

5 - Swansea
That i would turn out to be wrong, doesnt change that at the time, this game was my ‘scales from the eyes’ moment, no cohesion or intent or seeming quality from the moment they equalised, fans arguing about the gopro. baffling.

4 - Barnsley
Like a weird training exercise in seeing how may times the same diagonal ball to Sarr would need to be played to achieve anything. repetetive.

3 - Huddersfield
No effort, no plan, no fightback, no manager, capoue laughing at his own goal. gruesome.

2 - Coventry
Just utterley bizarre . The definition of madness is doing the same thing iver and over and expecting different results. A totally proven to fail formation, no energy, ownership, creativity or adaptability. Pivotal.

1 - Them.
Almost didnt pick this as the worst because in the end it didnt impact the main goal as much as it could have if we hadnt gone on to win the next 2 games. But…. It was atrocious from start to finish. Sickening.

 

Had an odd one a hockey yesterday. First a Gammon was arguing with my ASD son that 'motorhead' weren't a metal band ("...the term doesn't exist....") as they were a rock band. Then he turned on me pointing out the where QPR was now was better than we were as going up meant we were just cannon fodder for the EPL and things were "...better in the championship..." I was going to remind him of the gazillion quids of debt QPR had accumulated building a stadium fit for QPR's "...EPL future..." (sic.)...

 

Nothing this season has come close to being more entertaining than beating Liverpool 3-0, any of the man utd wins, West ham away, that ace win v Chelsea...

We've gone in to every match this season, maybe apart from Norwich away as favourites, and generally been second best even in victory.

What has been entertaining about this season? Even beating Bristol City 6-0 wasnt that great as they were so awful. Luton at home? Yes we won easily, but only one nil and the difference in quality was vast.

This season has been grim. All those who yearned for a season in this horrific league must not surely see the error of their ways.

 

This season would have been great if we’d been to see it from the stands.
As for the quality, of course it’s poorer in the championship. We have the choice of the excitement of possible promotion or relegation but poorer quality in the champ, or watching the very best in the land beat us in the prem while we target 17th ? Yes we have occasionally beaten the top6 but not often given we played them 60 times over the 5 years.

 

'Second best' is when we get tonked by City, not when we grind out a win against Sheffield Wednesday or Millwall who in reality hardly lay a glove on us

 

I couldn't give a shyt about the quality of the opposition if we're thrashing them every week. But we weren't. Far from it.

Of course it would have seemed better from the stands because we'd have been pissed.

 

I guess we watched a different season then. You make it sound like we dominated teams but just couldn't finish them off which couldn't be further from the truth.

If the teams in this league didn't have such appalling strikers we wouldn't have been promoted.

 

I have enjoyed the season for what it is worth. I would have enjoyed it more if I was allowed to go to more than one match, but what can you do?

I just like seeing Watford win, which we have done 26 times this season. Some/many have been ugly wins, but wins nonetheless. There’s something cathartic about an easy win over Rotherham that was always going to be an easy win. Every win in the Prem is riddled with doubt and stress. And there aren’t many to begin with.

 

But that's my point, most of our wins were riddled with doubt and stress, even though the opposition was shyte.

But then maybe that's just what football is like when you watch it sober.

 

Run of the mill game. Previous seasons equivalent was the boring 0-0 with Palace or the desperately poor 0-3 defeat to Burnley.

 

Yes I agree. It's not the same, and it is harder to watch. Watching on TV is nowhere near the same.

 

This can work both ways, but frankly one of the notable things about the Championship is that whole vast passages of play are essentially meaningless; given the level of play and opponent mistakes are not seized upon or punished anywhere near as much as they should be, and the general lethargy/malaise that hung like a fog over our team one way or another in, broadly-speaking, about half the games we played this season, meant that a great deal of game time has actually been totally lacking in either jeopardy or excitement, a little like a dressed-up training exercise for both teams.

That boredom was obviously a good thing overall for promotion, because it helped make it happen (and allowed WTE to have his fun leaning over the edge of a cliff just to see if he can manage to pull himself back in time, every match without fail) but when we talk about excitement, it doesn't even compare to the Premier League for me.

Even putting aside the general spectacle of testing yourself/your team in the joint best/toughest/fastest league in world football, every ball, every passage of play and every pass is impactful. Teams can't ever switch off, and if they do they're more often than not punished.

I hope more than anything that doesn't happen to us too much next season - it shouldn't, and I obviously wouldn't enjoy it if it does. But either way, being involved in that kind of fixture is worlds away from the mediocre trudge of so much of the game time we witnessed over the past 45 matches - and it's not even like we were constantly scintillating offering up that constant swashbuckling from one side of the pitch, either. There's a reason the world wants to watch the Premier League and certain owners dreamed up the idea of monopolising/stealing it for an international audience, and by comparison they do not give a **** about the Champ.

 

Well, at least you seem to have remembered more of the detail this season, no matter how grim you found it.

 

Yes I think I'm wrong on this. Watching it on telly (and even worse, with mooney commentating) is totally different to watching it live.

I have no idea how this season compares to watching a full prem season on the telly. I have definitely learned that a defeat watched on the telly feels more depressing than a defeat live, and the disappointment lingers for longer.

 

Three out of those five under Xisco! Although I'd be tempted to have QPR and Bristol City away in the mix.

The Huddersfield game was really weird, we obviously self combusted and the players knew that Ivic was on the way out but we actually created loads of chances, it was just that Gray was having one of those days. There was a plan that day, we just shot ourselves in the foot and Gray couldn't finish his dinner.

 

This is so true. It was a bit nerve-wracking at the start of the season seeing how many times opponents seemed to get in against us, with there being a subsequent surprise and relief when they completely fluffed their chances. However, as the season wore on and it became clear this was mostly just how the Championship was, many of the games hardly had any tension as it was far more of a surprise when opponents actually managed to finish their opportunities. The biggest question mark was usually just whether we would manage to find a goal from somewhere.

 

But you’ve never seen a defeat live ? You always walk out ?

 

Don't forget Wycombe away, they would have been out of sight if they could finish, and still would have beaten us at the end if not for a harsh foul on Foster. Could I put Boro away in there too? Scored a jammy opener, hardly threatened after that, despite being thoroughly unable to create anything outside of set pieces, Boro controlled that game

 

I'm surprised he picked Swansea and Barnsley over any of QPR, Wycombe and Forest.