72 Things I Want To See In The EFL In 2026/27
Countdown to Kick-Off #6 | After a few of last year’s wishes came true and many more didn’t, Huw Davies is back for more…
The EFL is back, bringing with it several million opportunities for something strange to happen. From breakout stars and proper derbies to statistical perfection and sensible squad numbers, here are 72 things I want to see in 2026/27.
Huw Davies
1) Fireworks on opening weekend. The line-up’s a bit of a belter, isn’t it? After Wolves vs Blackburn on Friday night (hey, come watch it with us), there’s Notts County vs Leicester among the Saturday lunchtime kick-offs, Sheffield United vs Birmingham at 5.30pm, three big hitters playing on Sunday and Cardiff vs Wrexham on Monday night, for their first league meeting in 24 years. And that’s just the matches on TV.
2) On that note, could we have more transparency about how many people watch the 12.30pm TV games? Having at least six every Saturday is starting to affect not just matchday sales but season ticket sales, as fans can’t predict how many inevitably rescheduled fixtures they’ll be unable to attend. Sky are sharing them about, to be fair – every Championship club has between 11 and 14 of their 22 league matches televised before Christmas – but I’d welcome some evidence of viewing figures justifying the disruption to supporters. It’s not uncommon for a club to go two months without a 3pm home game.
3) Same question, but for the Thursday night games in Leagues One and Two. There does seem to be a concerted effort this season to put the weekend’s big-ticket fixtures from those divisions in that slot, such as Sheffield Wednesday’s meetings with Bradford and Leicester, so that could make it more of an event.
4) Right, enough moaning (for now) – I’m looking forward to seeing more of AFC Wimbledon’s Junior Nkeng in 2026/27, whether that’s as a winger or a wing-back. He looks very promising and turned 19 only this week.
5) Norwich City, after Philippe Clement took them from 23rd to 9th. He was in charge for two-thirds of last season and only the eventual top four picked up more points in that time. Nice kits, too. It’s just such a shame Ali Ahmed has suffered a bad knee injury in pre-season.
6) Matt Uggla vs York fans. Chants on one side, social media barbs on the other – it’s already getting Uggly.
7) The new plan to crack down on fake injuries, preventing tactical timeouts.
8) Better timekeeping from the officials in general, to be honest.
9) Elijah Just, fresh in at Swansea after starring for Motherwell and then at the World Cup, which means the last two years have taken him from Denmark to Austria to Scotland to Wales via internationals with New Zealand and a breakout in North America. Everyone is excited about this signing. Swansea put up a supposed £6m-ish fee, and already the talk is of who will give them a handsome profit by buying him in a year’s time.
10) More surprise promotion winners. The 2025/26 campaign was glorious. If you put bookies’ pre-season title odds into an unofficial league ranking, Hull were predicted to finish 22nd, Lincoln 17th, Cambridge 10th and Bromley 21st in their respective divisions. Also in the play-offs were Millwall, Stevenage and newly-promoted Bradford. This is why we hope.
11) The expanded Championship play-offs leading to a team in 15th having a chance on final day. I want pure sporting merit or purer chaos, and nothing in between.
12) Progress made in the campaign for three up, three down in League Two. If the new play-off system is extended down the pyramid, the EFL’s basement tier will be the easiest division in world sport: finishing 3rd from the bottom to confirm safety and 9th from the top for a shot at promotion.
13) More Championship goalsmiths. The elaborate graph below charts the number of players who have scored 15+ and 20+ goals in each Championship season during the past 25 years. It ain’t going up.
14) Darrell Clarke to sort out Tranmere after seven consecutive years of finishing lower than they did the previous season. For a team who barely avoided relegation to non-league a few months ago, Tom Ince, Will Vaulks and Jordan Davies (if his injury woes are behind him) are weirdly good acquisitions. The first two may be past their prime, but they made a combined 66 Championship appearances last season and one of them scored a hat-trick. I’m not telling you which.
15) That relegation battle featuring Tranmere had the bottom five teams separated by a single point at half-time on final day. Is a repeat of such League Two drama too much to hope for? Yes, yes it is.
16) The Victorian Plumbing derby. They’ve been Bolton’s sponsors for years; now Bristol City are muscling in. Not only that, but to the minor annoyance of Bolton fans, City persuaded Victorian Plumbing to change their logo’s colour to suit the kit after they hadn’t done so for the Trotters. Their announcement of the new partnership in January motivated Steven Schumacher & Co. to win promotion just for the opportunity to show them who the real Victorian plumbers are. I don’t know, either – all I hear when I think of a Victorian plumber is, “It’s-a me, Isambard Kingdom Brunel”.
17) Yusuf Akhamrich at Leyton Orient. In the first few weeks of his spell with fourth-tier Bristol Rovers, the 20-year-old looked so far above the level that even a Championship loan this season might have seemed appropriate. He tailed off a bit, but that’s just given Orient a chance to let him light up League One for them.
18) Kim Hellberg with a full pre-season at Middlesbrough and players he actually trusts to perform in big moments.
19) A takeover at Colchester United. The club needs one. The fans want one. Owner Robbie Cowling seemingly wants one. But he has rejected several advances now, and while it’s commendable that he doesn’t want to hand the keys to the wrong custodian (including, it appears, a former England international and current far-right sympathiser), patience is running thin.
20) The situation with Tonda Eckert’s potential ban to be resolved quickly, one way or another. Spygate talk will actually become pretty tiresome this season, simply because it’ll be mentioned every single time Southampton play. That being said…
21) Middlesbrough v Southampton should be a cracker. Narratively, yes, it’s the only fixture between Saints and a team we know they spied on, Ipswich having been promoted and Oxford relegated – but it’ll also be a fascinating match-up between two attacking teams filled with quality. The added spice is just seasoning.
22) More statistical quirks. I love ’em. The one to beat from 2025/26 is QPR having more 0-0 draws than any other team in the Championship despite conceding the second-most goals (and scoring the 11th-most).
23) Here’s another: I’d like Fleetwood Town to be perfectly mediocre. They’re so close. I mentioned last year that they had ended 2024/25 with a record of W15 D15 L16 and a goal difference of 0, very nearly matching my beautiful vision of W15 D16 L15 GD 0, or the perfectly average season. Amazingly, or not, Fleetwood followed that by finishing 2025/26 with 15 wins, 16 draws and 15 defeats… but a goal difference of -1. You can do it, lads, I believe in you.
24) Othmane Maamma at Watford. A 20-year-old winger averaging 8.1 attempted dribbles per 90, as well as a high number of touches in the box, chances created and shots on target? Things are going to happen.
25) More players being converted to new positions, after Kyle Wootton did the Reverse Warhurst at Stockport and central midfielder George Thomason was a revelation as Wrexham’s left-sided wing-back, having never previously played there.
26) Argyle’s attack. Lorent Tolaj was superb but Bim Pepple and Owen Oseni can take on the mantle.
27) Port Vale’s home kit. There aren’t enough diagonal half-and-half shirts in football, and the gold offsets the monochrome so nicely that even Robbie Williams’ logo can’t ruin it.
28) A bona fide Japanese superstar. Hear me out. Several Japanese talents have moved to the Championship of late, but while many have impressed in patches, none could be considered among the division’s best players (sadly, due to injuries, the same goes for Kaoru Mitoma in the Premier League). It’s like watching Japan at every World Cup: exciting yet frustrating, sensing they could’ve made a bigger impact. So, I want to see Yuki Ohashi turn his 14 xG – higher than Zan Vipotnik – into more than 10 goals, or Kuryu Matsuki to turn promise into consistent performances, or Tomoki Iwata not having to sacrifice his own game to fill in where needed. Most of all, I hope Ryoya Morishita can break the trend by delivering a campaign that is truly fantastic rather than quietly decent.
29) Fewer teams punting the ball from kick-off straight out for a deep throw-in. A pox on this fashion.
30) Lincoln upsetting the odds again. I’ve a sneaking suspicion Ivan Varfolomeev could dominate games at this level. Retaining virtually all of their title-winning squad is a show of faith, as is appointing former assistants Chris Cohen and Tom Shaw to be joint-managers. Actually, that reminds me…
31) More joint-managers. Actually, that reminds me…
32) More player-managers. Any player-managers, in fact, not including caretaker roles. Remember them? Whatever happened to them, eh?!
33) Tom Iorpenda, back in League One with Huddersfield after a scintillating loan spell at Notts County.
34) Lee Grant. Walsall may have landed a good one here, after he was prematurely sacked by Huddersfield in the league above. But who can be sure, when he has taken just 30-odd games as a manager?
35) Gus Hamer to fully lean into the Ferenc Puskás vibes he’s bringing.
36) Northampton Town winning a football match. It’s been 84 years… all right, more like six months, but I feel there wasn’t enough discourse about their second half of last season. They won one of their 26 league games after Christmas. They took a single point from their last 15 matches, i.e. a third of the season. They lost each of their last 11. Fans deserve to know that the sweet release of relegation ended that run, rather than merely pausing it.
37) Wycombe re-signing one of their former players for the 19th year in a row.
38) Sheffield Wednesday building back stronger.
