The Championship 2020-21

No predictive text at all.

Just been using a phone a long time and know the keyboard off by heart so don’t have to look at it to type.

It’s just part and parcel of being a 90’s baby.

The next generation is probably going to be scarily quick (or all use rapid voice dictation)

Scary!


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I notice we've been made early favourites to win the league.. 13/2. Pressure is on immediately

 

Twitter is full of fans from other championship teams saying the same thing. Most thinking that we are going to storm the league and be crowned champions. At worst, it’s being promoted via the Play-offs. I’m surprised that they are all predicting us to finish between 1-3.

 

With the squad we currently have, we will win the league. There's no doubt about that. Maybe even get more than 100 points.

However, we're unlikely to keep our best players, which will have a dramatic impact.

The odds are reflective of the fact we have Sarr, Deulofeu, Welbeck, Doucoure & Foster, who are all top Premier League players, probably top 6 club players. Add to this Capoue, Deeney & Hughes with the unknown quality of Pedro, Suarez and Hernandez, it's little wonder why we're so heavily fancied.

 

Grabban has only ever scored one goal in The Premier League (that is one goal in 39 premier league appearances). Mitrovic has only hit double figures once in The top-flight scoring 11. I think Sarr and Gerry would run riot at Championship level it would be a dream to watch it but I am doubtful that it will happen.

 

Mitrovic and Watkins are obviously good, and are both destined for greater things, but Grabban bagging loads of goals yet again gives me a bit of hope, as he's never been anywhere near good enough for the Premier League, it won't take anything special to bag goals in this division. Gray and Deeney obviously won't be as effective in the Championship as they were 5 years ago, but I have confidence in the two Colombians (if they stay of course)--it is a step up from the Segunda (I remember being excited about Javier Acuna lol), but they (Suarez especially) have the physical attributes to succeed in England. All depends on who goes, but we have some potentially very Championship strikers already

 

Obviously it's very early in what our squad will end up like (along with the other sides in the league) but I personally think it's looking like a pretty weak league so far.

Norwich - Fair few players likely to leave but they've already been busy in sorting their squad out and the recruitment guys I know are fans of their signings. Should be a challenge,
Bournemouth - Obviously gonna have to shift a lot of players, so depends on how that rebuild goes. Plenty of money though.
Brentford - Will likely lose Watkins and Benhrama. Have no doubts they'll be able to replace them though so will likely be in and around the top 6 again.
Cardiff - Squad is pretty average, not a clue how they ended up 5th. Don't rate Harris as manager either.
Swansea - This seasons Derby from last season - relied a lot on loans from PL sides that will be hard to replicate next season. Could be in the mix again though if they manage to wrangle some good deals.
Forest - Could very well be in the mix again this season if they keep/replace their squad and make some decent additions
Millwall - Outside bet for the top 6 next season imo, done some great business early doors.
Preston - Meh, Neil has done well with a pretty average squad.
Derby: Another underwhelming season. Got some good youngsters coming through though - could be a big season for Sibley especially.
Blackburn: Meh.
Bristol City: Decent squad, but apparently they're gonna make an internal appointment of Dean Holden which would be a big blow to any chance they have of top 6 I think.
QPR: Meh.
Reading: Meh.
Stoke: Meh.
Middlesbrough: Be interesting to see what Warnock can do, can never write him off in the Championship.
Huddersfield: Experimental managerial hire, could work but also might bomb. Squad is pretty average
Luton: Be interesting to see what Nathan Jones can do with a full season there, did well since returning from Stoke but hard to imagine much more than mid-table.
Birmingham: Karanka is a decent but not amazing hire. Will be hard to replace Bellingham, apparently still have lots of debt as well so can't imagine they'll spend big replacing him.
Barnsley: Similar model to us but smaller in scale and more focus on the EFL, not sure what to expect since Struber is likely to leave.
Coventry: Interesting recruitment so far with a fair few foreign buys which is unusual for a newly promoted side, but a bit of a unknown quantity.
Rotherham: Not a clue.
Wycombe Wanderers: Don't know much about their squad other than Akinfenwa but hard to imagine he'll make much of an impact considering he's now 38!

 

I'm not so much. Some of our fans are an unforgiving doom and gloom lot. Those who aren't, or fans from other clubs, will see we were looking like we had a good chance of staying up before the lockdown and then for whatever reason we hit bad form at the wrong time on the restart. They likely believe that with the players we currently have that, in an uninterrupted campaign and at a lower level, we will be right up there.

Also, if and when players leave us this transfer window, those twitter Championship predictions may change a little bit.

 

What are they saying about the other relegated teams? Not 'worried' by anyone, but Norwich are well set to challenge imo, Bournemouth might struggle a bit

 

Lol at anybody thinking this squad of mentally weak, unmotivated wasters will somehow collect 100 points next season.

 

What part of "some of these players were average to good in the Championship 5-7 years ago" do you not understand?

 

Not saying it's going to happen but a lot of people were saying the same thing about the Newcastle squad in 2008/09 before they romped to the title with mostly the same set of players who'd let the club down the previous season. For the most part the opposition won't be good enough to really test the squad's mental strength and you are more motivated when you are at the top than the bottom.

 

I don't think we will be one of the challengers for promotion from the Championship.
Mid table is the best we can hope for.
A few €'s on relegation is not to be sniffed at.
Norwich look the stand out team. The rest are all mediocre. It is a poor looking Championship.

 

I don’t understand why anyone fancies Norwich. Had a really hot run to get promoted but poor for the previous 18 months. Absolutely shocking in the prem, losing last 10 during which they scored 1 , yes 1 goal and conceded 23. I think they have a far greater chance of actually going down again

 

Based on his performances against Cardiff, Huddersfield and Norwich's championship defences in the prem Geri would murder the championship. He also has a really good record in the Spanish second division.

 

It makes sense for us to be strong favourites, it’s only self protection that some people predict us to be mid table/struggling.

It’s the weakest league in quite some time, yes we’ll lose some players but the players we will lose will be top half premier league quality, nobody has close to that in the championship and we’ll still have a good squad. Nobody has any right it have players that good in the championship and nor would you ever need them.

Nostalgia and time play big tricks on people’s memories. In the first Pozzo season we got 10 loans from Udinese and should’ve got automatic, even though Udinese have declined since even then, they weren’t a top serie A team at that point either, yet they could still lend us 10 players and still manage comfortably.

imagine roles were reversed and we lent 10 players to Udinese last season, how good would those players have actually been for us to be able to spare them?

Unless we completely balls up the managerial side there is absolutely no reason why we won’t be challenging for top two.

 

You speak much sense, but you’ll have to excuse me for saying none of it really matters, when recent evidence suggests, there’s little chance we’ll get the managerial side right. This is particularly true if Giraldi continues to linger.

 

I predict the Championship is very unpredictable.

We'll finish somewhere in the top 21 I'd think.

 

Plus if you take away 4 or 5 key players from last season their squad is quite a bit worse than ours.

 

One thing is certain. If we finish below Sheffield Wednesday, we'd have had a very bad season.

 

A lot of you guys are saying how weak THE CHUMP is looking next season and that we should romp it, but we don't know what sort of team or even manager we will have yet do we? Therefore I think that many of you are jumping the gun, lets just wait and see what Gino and Co. do AND HOPE THEY GET IT RIGHT.

IMO if we hold on to our better experienced players, and yes that does include Deeney if fit enough, and also hang on to our much vaunted youngsters that we currently have out on loan around Europe plus of course the likes of Hughes, Sarr, Gerry etc., then you guys might well be right.

We must of course have a cull of our real deadwood, but basically we must not throw the baby out with the bath water and sell off our best assets. The time for selling the likes of Deeney and some of our older heads will be once we have regained our PL status at the end of next season, as clearly many of them are not good enough for the PL, but should be more than good enough for The Chumpionship.

Furthermore, hopefully our younger better assets will want to stay with us a little longer as well when we have bounced back to the PL.

THE HORNS ARE GOING UP​

 

Five that you wouldn't want anywhere near our squad.

 

Well I believe they'd finished third in the league at one stage, were regularly qualifying for Europe. Champions league on one occasion I think. Had Granada do very well for them too. So I'd class that as a successful Serie A team then. Not so much now as you point out.
But again its irrelevant.

 

If you read the FA Cup Final thread, you'll see similar things said about us 'kicking on' last season and the club heavily investing in the defence.

Sadly some fans are so 'into' it and hopelessly devoted to Gino, they can't see the wood for the trees.

 

Not sure you’re right about Stoke. Finished pretty strongly.

 

I believe @Hogg-DEENEY!!! Mentioned stoke. I'm going for Middlesbrough to cause some problems. Warnock has a real knack in the Championship. I doubt they will win it, but top 6 looks a good bet.

 

How can anyone predict where we will finish when we have no idea what manager and team we will have ?
We could finish anywhere.

 

Indeed.

I said this earlier in the thread.

We could also throw in we don't know our rivals' squads either yet.

 

Seeing as we get about 3 players a season caught speeding maybe we can count these points in the total...

 

The point is that was all pre Watford. They finished 5th the season they bought us then 13th the following year. They could still afford to lend us ten players who made the difference in the championship. None of those ten players never made it at the top level unless you include Deeney and to a much lesser degree Vydra.

 

Of course I agree. Once we've hopefully shifted some of that deadwood we can then concentrate on filling the required slots with upgrades on what we have. Tbh in my rash head there isn't many I want staying but logically we need some experience in the squad. Who I don't know...
Hughes as Captain would be a fantastic start.
Big strong capable centre back too wouldn't go a miss

 

One thing that worries me is every season we have any sort of expectation, we're ****. 07/08 - **** , 13/14 - ****, 19/20 - ****.