SQUAD SELECTOR 25/26: Championship
Ali Maxwell drafts a 24-man Championship squad, picking only one player per club.
It’s the big one…
The Second Tier World Cup. We’ve won the Third Tier and Fourth Tier equivalents in ludicrously dominant fashion. The depth of our professional game is simply too vast, and the blend of guile, style and steel included in my squads simply too much for les adversaires.
We’re favourites here, too. Did you know that Opta’s League Ranking has the Championship as the ninth-strongest division in World Football? That suggests that, were this a World Cup including squads from the top 32 (or 48) leagues in the world, we’d be ninth-favourites, roughly equivalent to Belgium in this year’s FIFA World Cup.
On this measure, our stiffest competition is likely to come from the 2.Bundesliga in Germany (19th in Opta’s ranking), the Spanish Segunda Division (24th), France’s Ligue 2 (36th) and Italy’s Serie B (37th).
My squad selector rules: Three goalkeepers are compulsory. The rest is up to me, except for one strict rule: I can only select one player per club. The goal is to select a squad that provides a realistic tactical blend – a team that could actually make sense on the pitch, rather than just looking good on Fantasy EFL.
Got a better XI? Go on — back it up in the comments.
GOALKEEPERS
Viktor Johansson (Stoke), Daniel Iversen (Preston), Pierce Charles (Sheffield Wednesday)
For the third year in a row, Viktor Johansson is my #1. His season-ending shoulder injury around the New Year cut short another dominant shot-stopping season. His save percentage of 76.1% is third in the division, and he may well be Sweden’s #1 at the World Cup if he recovers soon.
He also happens to play for a perennially underperforming team that gives him plenty of opportunities to show off his skills, while his team-mates tend to underwhelm. Daniel Iversen will be a noble deputy as long as there’s no Sweden v Denmark beef between them, while 20-year-old Pierce Charles already has 10 IRL international caps for Northern Ireland and has an incredibly exciting future.
CENTRE-BACKS
Christoph Klarer (Birmingham), Lloyd Jones (Charlton), Dom Hyam (Wrexham), Matt Clarke (Derby)
What a wonderful quartet of nightclub bouncers. “Sorry, mate, you can’t come in.” You wouldn’t question it – you’d just get the hell out of there.
Now, I’m not the greatest CB scout on earth, so I can’t pretend I have a hugely clear idea of the hierarchy here (that’s what my assistant manager Steve Bould is for). But I’m sure as hell happy with this lot defending my penalty box with their lives.
My gut instinct is that I’d like Christoph Klarer to start at RCB, and alongside him I don’t mind too much. Is it fair to say that, as well as being the only left-footed option, Matt Clarke is the most comfortable on the ball of the other three? I think so.
Either way, Dom Hyam has been one of the Championship’s most consistent CBs for years now, and Lloyd Jones has stepped up to the level brilliantly.
