9th.....? Piss Off !!!
OK here it is. I started to write this and realised that I don’t know a lot about a number of the sides in the Championship. Undeterred I battled on until the point where I’d really had enough.... Predicted finishing place is in brackets so this can be used as a stick to beat me around the head with at the end of the season. For the record, last year I picked Brighton as an outsider to do well along with Sheffield Wednesday (not good) and Plymouth (who got relegated and went into administration) so anyone who puts any money on, based on what I’ve written here is a fool.
Here we go....Not a good start as I know nothing about them really.... errr Darren Gough and Dickie Bird. Not expected to survive last season and everyone’s favourites for relegation again this season. That’s last place taken care of.
Along with Pompey (3 times)...another great failure of the Fit and Proper Persons Test as Carson Yeung takes over and within a year, is arrested and accused of money laundering, all his money is impounded, leaving newly relegated Brum somewhat in the brown stuff. Have lost many players and you would expect them to lose a few more and with the cash flow problem, will they be able to rebuild? – also, administration can’t be ruled out. Could probably finish anywhere between 3rd and 24th so I’m going for a kind of average position.
After entertaining many last year, they sunk back to the Championship and now Ian Holloway has it all to prove again, after working miracles in his first season there. No Charlie Adam or DJ Campbell who were their two major players in the Premier League and unbelievably, they let Saints legend Jason Euell go. However, (sing) “they’ve got Brett Ormerod, they’ve got Brett Ormerod” and most of the rest of their squad from last season. A lively and relatively successful season awaits I think with Holloway regularly lurching between ‘amusing’ and ‘dickhead’. Interestingly, he’s been under no real pressure since he joined
No one else seems to have picked up that their results against the top 6 last season were poor, suggesting that they efficiently beat all the League 1 rubbish but struggled against better sides. Welcome to the Championship which by definition, is full of better sides. Maybe we’ll see a few more Gus meltdowns like the one he had against Saints. As Saints fans will remember, the new ground thing can work both ways – if you don’t win there for a while then it becomes an issue and other teams will prefer playing there to the Withdean, mind you, I’d prefer playing on the Veracity Ground with all the dogshit, than playing at the Withdean. Craig Mackail-Smith is an outstanding buy for them though and if he fires, they’ll be comfortable. The loss of Elliot Bennett will be felt though as he provided a fair number of both goals and assists last season. Could really struggle if Poyet gets poached but for this season at least, I think that’s unlikely.
Bristol City (19th)
They seemed to throw a fair bit of money at it last year and were expected to challenge for the playoffs at least but didn’t really do anything much. With David James in goal and Nicky Maynard up front (if he stays) they’ll stay out of trouble just about. As you can tell – I don’t know much about them other than that.
Burnley (11th)
I thought they’d challenge the top 6 until they failed to match our bid (or even bid at all) for Jack Cork who had been on loan there for 18 months. They’ve also managed to lose Tyrone Mears and Chris Eagles toBolton for next to nothing as they’d allowed them to get into the last year of their contracts. I hope they still have Chris Iwelumo who is the stereotypical lower league centre forward, awkward and a handful but with no discernable ability whatsoever (see Ade Akinbiyi, Dele Adebola, Darius Henderson, Steve Howard, Fatboy Parkin, Alan Lee, Clive Platt). Eddie Howe is their manager and he has a big reputation for what he achieved at Bournemouth despite being a moaning whining depressing git who is full of excuses.
I thought they’d challenge the top 6 until they failed to match our bid (or even bid at all) for Jack Cork who had been on loan there for 18 months. They’ve also managed to lose Tyrone Mears and Chris Eagles to
When Cardiff lost in the playoffs, I received a text from a
SISU took them over instead of taking over Saints and they haven’t done too well out of it and seem to be struggling financially. A rookie manager in Andy Thorn and good players leaving the club sounds like a recipe for a poor season. Lukas Jutkiewicz is still there despite being linked with Saints this summer but overall... going down.
Another club treading water desperately trying to stay out of League 1. They have however, recently survived having Whisky George Burley as their manager so if you can survive that, the omens have to be good for this season. Neil Danns has gone and it’ll be tough but I reckon they’ll stay up just about.
Err is Nigel Clough still the manager trying desperately to cast off the shadow of his father ? Robbie Savage? Retired. Nothing to see here – very average and their fans are .... interesting.
I hope Billy Sharp is happy at Donny. That is all. In fact, I like Sean O’Driscoll and the way his teams go about things and play decent football. They are probably destined to always either be in the Championship or League 1 but I think they’ll stay up this year. O’Driscoll learnt his trade at
Hull (15th)
I can’t think about Hull without thinking of that perma-tanned knobhead Phil Brown on the pitch, either singing or doing that pointy finger thing with his players. Nigel Pearson is in charge now and obviously doesn’t go for that approach at all, nor the approach of Jimmy Bullard who despite being on a reported £50k a week, is persona non grata at the club after a pre-season incident. I wonder what it was. I predict they’ll do ok without pulling up any trees.
I can’t think about Hull without thinking of that perma-tanned knobhead Phil Brown on the pitch, either singing or doing that pointy finger thing with his players. Nigel Pearson is in charge now and obviously doesn’t go for that approach at all, nor the approach of Jimmy Bullard who despite being on a reported £50k a week, is persona non grata at the club after a pre-season incident. I wonder what it was. I predict they’ll do ok without pulling up any trees.
Paul Jewell, King of Porn, steadied the ship last year and has been busy in the transfer window, notably by shipping out Connor Wickham for a ridiculously hefty £9 million. He’s brought in experience in Lee Bowyer and Michael Chopra and they’ll be solid but not spectacular. It’s a hard thing to achieve but I reckon
Did surprisingly well last year and there’s no real reason to assume they won’t be good again this year. There’s a worry that they concede too many goals and with Ken Bates there, you can never be too sure that stability will remain but once they get going they’ll be difficult to beat, especially at
Sven Goran Eriksson, possibly the biggest charlatan in the history of football has once again found himself at a club with loads of money and boy is he spending it, wedging out ridiculous amounts in fees, wages and secretaries. They’ll be expecting to win the league and along with West Ham, will be the team everyone wants to beat this year. Hopefully enough teams will beat them to consign them to the playoffs where they will hopefully have a penalty shoot-out exit. However, with players signed like Mills, Konchesky, Pantsil, Nugent and St.Ledger to go with the decent players he had last year– if Leicester fail to go up then the rest of the world will know that Sven is a charlatan as well, he’ll get sacked and no doubt get a job in Dubai or somewhere else with money and secretaries.
Middlesbrough (5th)
Managed by Boro legend and all round nice guy, Tony Mowbray,Middlesbrough spent the second half of last season recovering from the Strachan experiment and this season will be looking for a playoff spot at least. In Boyd and MacDonald they have a potent enough strike force which should tear the rest of the division a new one. Mind you, it won’t be as easy as playing in the SPL will it lads. I can’t help but associate them with Gareth Southgate who is one of the most boring men I’ve ever seen on TV even though he’s long gone.
Millwall (7th)Managed by Boro legend and all round nice guy, Tony Mowbray,
No one like us, no one like us etc. West Ham don’t like you and nor do the Police who are going to be on duty at those games. I was surprised at how well they did last season coming straight out of League 1 via the playoffs and should act as the real role model for Brighton and Saints, rather than
Billy Davies was fired when
No one likes Darren Ferguson do they, apart from his Dad... and maybe his mum? They’ve lost their main goalscorer and I still think they’ll leak like an Old Peoples Home in the summer. If they plug the leaky defence then they no longer have Mackail-Smith to run the forward line on his own so I see nothing but pain for them and
Whilst it will surprise no one that I don’t like them and think they’re a disgrace to football, the Skates will be ok. Steve Cotterill is a good enough manager to ensure they stay afloat, even if they have to do it with a squad of 16 and beg, steal and borrow all season. It is odd though that we are one day from kick off and they have I think, 16 players, one of whom (Kanu) is 104 years old. They got away with it last year due to relatively few injuries but the players they have all seem to be uniformly over 30 so I guess they can’t rely on that again. Problems could arise if Cotterill leaves for whatever reason but for now, they have a good enough first XI to survive. Can’t see it being much more than that though but I do look forward to the Derbies against them and the banter with my Skate mates. Bastards.
Surprised many by being so strong last year under Brian McDermott but as is often the case if you have a near miss, your best players are pinched with Matt Mills going for £5 million to Leicester (yes, that Matt Mills who we sold for £250,000 and played Calum Davenport instead) and no one seriously expects Shane Long to be there after the transfer window has closed. Even if Long does go, they’ll still have enough to be comfortably in the top 10. I like Jimmy Kebe on the wing who will beat 9 players and then fall over or ignore all his team mates and lash it over the bar.
I think we should be aiming for a playoff spot and it should be considered a good season if we finish in the top half. I do worry about our defence and keeper which is a bit odd considering we let in so few goals last year which can partly be explained by the fact that especially at SMS, a lot of teams just came for a 0-0 and didn’t attack at all. When we did let in goals, they were often very poor ones from a defensive point of view. Jose Fonte really has to lead by example this year but I can’t help but feel that we need another addition at centre half. Kaspars Gorkss has been mentioned and he’d be ideal having had the experience very recently As I’ve said before, Davis and Harding worry me and they need to step up. I think we’re fine in midfield and attack and I’m particularly looking forward to seeing how Sir Rickie responds to playing in the highest standard he’s played in. For what it’s worth, I think he’ll do really well. Last year I picked out Lee Barnard as the man to have a big season and if he hadn’t gone drinking that night, then he would have done. He did pretty well anyway but the player I think will stand out this season is Guly do Prado. I’m sure he’ll get moved around again from the wing to the point of the diamond, to centre forward but having settled in
Had a highly rated manager and a highly rated centre forward but Malky McKay went to
West Ham (1st)
The dildo boys seem hell bent on throwing money at it to try and get the Hammers back into the Premier League. It really does seem to be a shit or bust effort though and I can’t imagine Karren Brady selling the business plan to Alan Sugar on The Apprentice. They’ll succeed because of the manager they’ve put in place in Sam Allardyce and should start next season in their new Virtually Free Stadium in the Premier League. I look forward to more fan protests as the Boleyn Ground’s time draws near... Derby Days with Millwall should be a laugh too and likeLeicester , it will be funny if they don’t go up.
So there you have it… West Ham and Forest to go up, The dildo boys seem hell bent on throwing money at it to try and get the Hammers back into the Premier League. It really does seem to be a shit or bust effort though and I can’t imagine Karren Brady selling the business plan to Alan Sugar on The Apprentice. They’ll succeed because of the manager they’ve put in place in Sam Allardyce and should start next season in their new Virtually Free Stadium in the Premier League. I look forward to more fan protests as the Boleyn Ground’s time draws near... Derby Days with Millwall should be a laugh too and like
Bring it On. Again.
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