The grind and the glory

From Hollywood owners to fallen giants, the return of the Championship tomorrow promises another season of high drama for the £200m dreamers, writes Richard Jolly

- By Richard Jolly

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 playoff 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 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.