There has to be unpredictability and jeopardy and every English league bar the Premier League has plenty of both…
Many of us know that the best league in England (who could be so arrogant as to claim ‘in the world’?) is the Championship, due to kick
off on Friday with Huddersfield taking on Burnley.
I wrote a whole book about what ‘best’ means when defining football. Is it entertainment, is it excitement, is it the ability to pass the ball, shoot, tackle or save? There’s no definitive answer, of course, but an important quality has to be unpredictability of results and that’s where the Championship (and other lower leagues) comes into its own.
Before the season starts, none of us have a clue who will finish in the top six places in the Championship. It could realistically be about 20 of the 24 teams. While the parachute payments are distorting the finances of the league and need abolishing before further reducing the league’s innate unpredictability, there is still plenty of flux in the Championship.
Of last season’s relegated teams, none of Watford, Burnley or Norwich look guaranteed to go back up, with squads filleted of their best players and largely not yet replaced. And all three have new managers who may or may not be a success. They certainly have an advantage but we’ve seen advantages squandered many times before, with often less resourced but better coached teams, such as Sheffield United and recently Brentford and Nottingham Forest gaining promotion.
Remarkably, a team can lose 12 games in a season and still get promoted; a team can win 14 and still get relegated. And transformations happen all the time. Huddersfield finished third last season, but 20th the season before. When Norwich were promoted as champions in 2018/19, they’d finished 14th the previous season, second-placed Sheffield United were 10th the previous year.
In 2020/21, Nottingham Forest finished 17th before their fourth place got them promoted through the play-offs. This is the proper functioning of the league as a competition.
If you’re a fan of a club in the Championship – as I am – the great thrill is knowing that there is always a possibility that this season might be a promotion season, but just as importantly, that you might do well by your own standards, whatever they may be.
The fact that four early losses won’t end your season in September, is also a great positive. Even halfway through the season, if you’re languishing in the bottom…
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