Championship 2024-25

Best I can do is after the postponement I'm afraid

 

Still suspended m8.

 

See you next season Derby County!

 

Pretty good achievement for Derby to get back up in two years considering they didn't even make the play-offs last season and how hard it is these days for the bigger clubs to get out of League 1 (Sunderland and Ipswich both took four years, Portsmouth 12 with the last seven in League 1, losing the play-offs twice, and Sheffield Utd six). If Birmingham go down they could be stuck in the lower divisions for a fair while, especially they haven't been down there for a long time and won't know what to expect.

So we won't be playing Lincoln next season even though it was in their hands to compete in the play-offs. But Oxford deserve it, it would have been unfair on them to have missed out with 77 points after being in the promotion frame all season in place of Lincoln who only got into contention from March.

At the other end, Burton survive a nerve-wracking final day during which for a long time they were only one Cheltenham goal from relegation. A valiant effort from the Robins, but you can't expect to not score in any of your first 11 games and stay up. Credit to Stevenage though for not planning for their holidays already after their play-off hopes all but ended two weeks ago, giving Lincoln hope and Burton a big helping hand.

 

No guarantees Burnley will even be in the division next season!

 

I think Barnsley hadn’t won their last six games going into the play-offs and were a Lincoln win over Pompey from not even making the top six.

You can’t turn on form just like that for the play-offs, especially against a strong outfit like Bolton - disappointing because after a really good season during which they threatened the three automatic promotion contenders until late on and were unlucky not to at least take the final to penalties and their opening 7-0 win against Port Vale this one, I really thought they’d be right up there.

Barnsley could still complete an unlikely turnaround, teams have come back in the play-offs from an identical or similar position (I don’t think any team has come back from being three goals down in the home leg though).

 

Watched 2nd half of this tie tonight and it put me in mind of the Boothroyd era for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, Barnsley’s stumbling over the line into the play offs and inevitable sound home beating by an upwardly mobile club put me in mind of the way we approached and how things panned out in our tie with Hull City.
Secondly, Barnsley currently being managed by Martin Devaney, who had a bizarrely brief spell with us signed one summer (by Aidy it turns out) and let go before the summer was out! Does anyone remember why that was? Wiki doesn’t really say, but I have a sense “Disco” was a bit of a character and was there an incident on a pre season trip or something like that?

 

Wasn’t there supposed to be a proper fist fight with Aidy or one of the squad ?

 

Shame. We need a minnow relegation favourite to be promoted to help us stay up next season, not Bolton. Hopefully Oxford or Peterborough can still pip them to promotion and perform that role.

 

Has there ever been a bigger play-off defeat than the 6-1 defeat we suffered against Hull? Normally you'd expect 3rd vs 6th to be competitive, but that was anything but, which wasn't unexpected considering the form we were on, but bitterly disappointing considering we were, what, 12 points clear at one stage?

 

Bolton looking very good for the play-off final, have we played them since the 4-3 up at theirs?

 

They've said it won't and that there will be a 'more even spread'. Will have to wait and see I guess but they're saying Championship clubs should be on about 23 times a year each, which sounds pretty bonkers but makes a Sky subscription more worthwhile as a Watford fan.

The fact they're planning to announce all tv picks up until the FA Cup 3rd round before the season begins is a pretty big bonus as well.

 

Does anyone know what the kick-off times for televised games will be? Presumably they will have to be spread across the weekend?

The Saturday 3pm KO is likely to become a rarity, which is fantastic news for non-league football.

 

The 3pm blackout on Saturdays still exists. Judging by that article/Q&A above, there will be 7 Championship games at 3pm every Saturday. The rest spread out over Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday.

Zero times mentioned as of yet.

 

No, they're keeping them under wraps for now. On the assumption they're not going to put their Championship picks up against each other and the Premier League will take precedence every single time you'd have to think there's going to be a couple of stinkers in there most weekends.

 

Around half the matches will be 1230pm Saturday kick offs, one Friday night, one Sunday lunchtime, and the rest 3pm Saturday, according to this guy (see the full thread):
https://x.com/MichaelPotts_/status/1788163451287748642

I can't get my head around these changes, I've got so many questions about having this many games on live. Won't this have a major impact on attendances, particularly for away fans? Just how big a market is there for the 6th most exciting League Two game, when there'll be also be a PL and about a dozen other EFL matches available at the same time? And given the increased production quality necessary for Sky compared to Hive Live single camera-standard quality that we've had this season, how will the viewing figures justify it all?

 

It's easier to get your head around it when you realise they (the clubs, the FA, the various leagues, UEFA, FIFA) don't give two hoots about the fans or how many go or don't go. It's all about the moolah.

 

They're not hiding it - it's literally in the Q&A you linked to earlier. They worked out getting rid of the Saturday 3pm blackout would cost clubs £37m in attendance revenue (presumably per season) across all 72 clubs and none of the offers from broadcasters got close to compensating them for that. If they had though presumably that would have gone too.

 

I remember going there in the snow once, white pitch and orange ball. Steve Sims era...

 

I haven’t gone back to check but when I read the other article earlier it said something about championship clubs being financially better off by 46%. With us having an average attendance of about 15,000 (despite the fact the club says we sell out every game) I would assume that this new TV deal financially far outweighs any finance we can bring in by selling tickets for games. 12,000 season tickets have already been sold. So for game days you’re looking at adding another 3,000 tickets. If you say the average ticket is £30, over 23 home games that’s a revenue of nearly £2.1mil.

According to the article the break down of the new deal will be something like 80%, 12%, 8%.

So out of £179mil annually, championship clubs will be splitting £143.2mil per year. Obviously clubs that drive the division will take more but keeping it simple £143.2mil divided by 24 is approximately £6mil.

Hence them saying the average club will be approx 46% better off.

Based on simple hypothetical math, even if we lose those 3000 fans that buy tickets (not season ticket holders) we Mogi will still be £4mil better off.

 

Fixtures released at 9am on Wednesday 26th June.

Season starts 10th August

Season ends 3rd May