How the Championship’s compelling and cruel nature delivers every time

After an indictment of the Championship, its advertisement came shortly after. Its last three escapees procured just 59 Premier League points between them and were swiftly cast back to the Football League. Yet Tommy Watson’s injury-time play-off winner for Sunderland showed the Championship in its full glory: the drama and the dream, the £200m reward for promotion, but also the emotion.

And, crucially, the unpredictability. Sunderland’s promotion without the benefit of parachute payments offered hope for the Championship’s upwardly mobile middle class; it was less good news for Chris Wilder, sacked by Sheffield United. Luton’s relegation back to League One, with parachute payments, showed the Championship can be both compelling and cruel.

Last year’s division was both tight, with only 20 points separating demoted Luton from fifth-place Coventry, and subject to a rare level of domination, with Leeds and Burnley twinned on 100 points at the top.

So to the 2025-26 Championship, to the familiar assortment of the ambitious and the expensive, the impatient and the impoverished.

The division starts with the familiar expectation that, in footballing gravity, what has come down must go back up, but also the potential that those who have come up, in Birmingham City and Wrexham, may be expected to do the same. It also begins with 11 managerial changes.

Two of them are among the outcasts from the Premier League. Marti Cifuentes has been tasked with emulating Enzo Maresca at Leicester, but becomes the club’s sixth manager in under three years and starts with the handicap of a potential points deduction, after Leicester were charged with a PSR breach in 2023-24.

While there have been a few arrivals and, aside from Jamie Vardy, few notable departures, the squad still boasts plenty of quality.

Southampton hired the managerial wunderkind Will Still, in charge of a fifth club at just 32. It could be seen as a dramatic response to a calamitous season or the best appointment they could make in the circumstances. After getting just 12 points, it is a peculiarity that their last two managers, Russell Martin and Ivan Juric, could both manage in the Champions League this season.

In the Championship, Saints will be without Aaron Ramsdale, Kyle Walker-Peters, Jan Bednarek, Adam Lallana, Kamaldeen Sulemana and Paul Onuachu, presumably with a couple more departures to follow. But some players who seemed to inhabit the no-man’s land of being too good for the Championship and not good enough for the Premier League. Certainly, an attacking contingent of Adam Armstrong, Ben Brereton Diaz, Cameron Archer and Ross Stewart belong in that category; the young American Damion Downs, a £7m buy, could be another source of goals.

Then there is Ipswich, with continuity in the dugout under Kieran McKenna, and much on the pitch. Liam Delap has left, and Omari Hutchinson may follow, but part of their recruitment last year was to sign the Championship all-stars, which should stand them in good stead. They look set to be joined by the 2022-23 Championship player of the year, Chuba Akpom, while Ashley Young won promotion from the division in 2006 and is older than his manager.

Ipswich may look the likeliest bet for promotion. Their journey from League One to the Premier League in successive seasons in 2022-23 and 2023-24 may offer encouragement to Birmingham and Wrexham.

The Blues come fresh from earning 111 points last season and a manager in Chris Davies, who has a similar career path to McKenna, as a highly-rated coach at a top club. Birmingham have bought the former Celtic forward Kyogo Furuhashi, and alongside Jay Stansfield, gives them considerable firepower. While bringing back Demarai Gray, at 29, shows an immediate determination to get promotion.

Wrexham, meanwhile, have the Hollywood owners and the least Hollywood of managers, in Phil Parkinson. Their income is boosted by their commercial appeal, and some of it is being spent on a series of signings. Conor Coady may be both the most high-profile and the loudest but it is worth remembering this is just the second spell in the second tier in their history and that, three years ago, they were in non-league. In clashes of clubs who have travelled in opposite directions, it scarcely feels a coincidence that the first games of the season are Birmingham against Ipswich and Wrexham’s trip to Southampton.

Yet the 18 clubs that went neither up nor down may look at Sunderland, and their influence might be seen across the division. Some of the managerial newcomers look like attempts to find their own Regis Le Bris. QPR went for Julien Stephan, another Rennes alumnus, to take over from Cifuentes. Sergey Jakirovic has become the latest in an eclectic line of Hull appointments. Paulo Pezzolano, deemed a promotion specialist, was hired by Watford, which tends to be a precursor to being fired by Watford.

Sheffield United replaced Wilder with Ruben Selles, looking for more AI-led recruitment; artificial intelligence led them to the Bulgarian market. The Spaniard may have traded up in the division, but there was intrigue in Liam Manning leaving play-off finishers Bristol City, for Norwich, who came in the bottom half despite having two of the four top scorers. It spoke to the untapped potential at Carrow Road. It is a boost, though perhaps only a temporary one, that Josh Sargent has stayed while the Canaries are looking for new signing Mathias Kvistgarden to replace Borja Sainz.

Among last season’s other underachievers, Ryan Mason gets his first managerial job at West Bromwich Albion. Middlesbrough have brought in Rob Edwards, who played a part in Luton’s exit from the division in each direction, for Michael Carrick.

Carrick may have underperformed last season, but not as much as an old teammate. Thus far, however, no one has made the mistake of appointing Wayne Rooney. Frank Lampard has been lazily lumped in with some of England’s golden generation as they stumbled in various dugouts, but he had a transformative impact at Coventry last season.

In a division where the majority of teams are evenly matched, the right choice, coupled with momentum, can make a difference. Lampard’s predecessor, Mark Robins, might end Stoke’s status as the division’s annual disappointments. Millwall’s club-record buy of Josh Coburn shows their goals too.

There were, though, too few goals last season, with just 2.45 per game, down from 2.68 per game in 2023-24. And it was not just because of Burnley’s astonishing total of 30 clean sheets. Parsimony paid off for them. Others are forced into frugality.

Hull have a transfer embargo, meaning they cannot buy. Sheffield Wednesday are in more desperate straits as owner Dejphon Chansiri’s reign unravels. Their transfer embargo is compounded by the exits of unpaid players and the manager, Danny Rohl, leaving his replacement Henrik Pedersen with a horribly thin squad, despite the admirable loyalty of Barry Bannan. The enforced closure of the North Stand at Hillsborough on safety grounds has not helped matters. A club is in crisis. While others imagine going up, the season begins with the probability that an increasingly beleaguered Wednesday will go down.