NTT20's Championship Preview: Fan Sentiment
The Championship season starts tomorrow. Here's how fans of second-tier clubs are feeling about the campaign ahead.
What do Championship fans think about their club’s chances? We asked them, and now we find out. Welcome to the EFL Fan Sentiment Preview.
And whilst you’re here, check out our club-by-club Cheat Sheet for the Championship. These two articles bring our Season Preview content to a close.
It’s interesting to compare and contrast sentiment across the leagues. Some things seemingly unite all fans; notably, not predicting your team to finish in the relegation spots. Plenty of other themes split the divisions and their supporters—from confidence in a manager sticking out a season to assumptions about avoiding the drop. One thing is consistent across more than 80% of fans of all 72 clubs. Three little letters; an acronym, for three little words.
Championship Preview: Fan Sentiment
In League Two, only 17% of fans consider their teams’ promotion chances to be low. In League One, it’s 38%. In the Championship, though, clubs know their place. It’s odd to see supporters of Portsmouth (who are riding the crest of a wave) and West Bromwich Albion (who last finished outside the second tier’s top 10 in 1999/2000) rating their chances below even ‘medium’, but such is the crushing reality of parachute payments, perhaps.
That’s more like it! Believe in
yourselvesyour team. Although from a content perspective, we’d quite like the relegation battle to feature more than five clubs… bad news may beckon for a few of the more confident types. Also: we’re getting very mixed messages from Hull fans here, after their vehement disagreement with the 1-24s.
Last season, 14 of the 24 clubs lost, sacked or mutually terminated their manager (with 17 departures in all). Our fans are clearly confident that theirs won’t be the ones to do it. Sheffield Wednesday are skewing the data, too, because Danny Röhl was technically still in charge at the time, but isn’t any more – this is not some dire judgement on the future of Henrik Pedersen. Leicester were yet to appoint Martí Cifuentes, which is why they aren’t included.
Hope springs (mostly) eternal. In League One, for contrast, the split was 49/51. But the Championship is the waiting room to paradise and it’s hard not to be caught up in the feeling that a new defender here, a better set-piece record there, and the points tally can improve enough to get into the play-offs or automatics. The exceptions, after all, are mostly from supporters of teams who were in the play-offs last year and suspect they’ll have it tougher this time around…
Sheffield is going full cliché in the Yorkshire misery stakes, albeit with very good reason in the blue corner. Bristol City fans’ down-to-Earth assessment follows an unbelievable overachievement to reach (though seemingly some feel they can kick on further under Gerhard Struber), while followers of the U’s and R’s are relatively grounded. Everybody else is flying to the Moon.
This looks largely in line with expectations, the bookies and the 1-24s. Though again, Hull fans appear split on their club’s prospects. Perhaps Wrexham fans would revise their predictions upward after a steady stream of recent signings? Maybe, after a couple of departures, Blades fans would revise down? But blimey, it’s all pretty sensible in the Championship.
But what of the predictions made, not about your club, but about the eventual Champions?
Swish ‘swich, bitch. Confidence is high that the Tractor Boys will mow down whoever stands in their way and harvest plenty of points. A 56% consensus-of-sorts is higher than the 52.6% for the runaway predicted winners of League Two, MK Dons, and outstrips League One favourites Luton by some 10%. For once, though, there’s no suggestion that every club kicked out by the Premier League bouncers will saunter back in at opening time, due to Leicester’s off-field problems.
Huge thanks to everyone who filled in the survey. Your input and knowledge shaped all of our 25/26 preview content. And big love to the NTT20 Squad for your constant support.
which Boro fans were you speaking to????