Welcome to 26/27 and one huge NTT20 extravaganza

Countdown to Kick-Off #1 | Ali Maxwell introduces the greatest series of EFL previews in the universe – an article every day for 14 days.

Start your engines.

The 2026/27 EFL season is almost upon us. And so, from now until Wolves v Blackburn on Friday 14th August, we will send paid subscribers one substantial item of preview content each and every day.

14 days. 14 pieces of content.

We’ll introduce you to the EFL’s newcomers, predict which managers will be sacked, name 72 things we want to see this season, interview a manager and reflect your views on your clubs in the biggest EFL preview there is.

Paid subscribers get it all. But everyone gets the chance to see what NTT20.COM is all about with a 14-day free trial as a paid subscriber👇

What can we expect?

Last season brought us three surprise title winners: Coventry City, Lincoln City and Bromley. It featured Spygate, one of the most outrageous English football scandals I can remember. It gave us impressive overachievers in Hull City, Millwall, Bradford and Stevenage. We saw Leicester suffer a double relegation, plus plenty of struggle and strife elsewhere, resulting in 40 of the 72 EFL clubs (>55%) starting the 2026/27 campaign with a different manager to the one who started last season. Expectations are high, costs are eye-watering, and patience is short.

That leads to volatility, drama… storylines. And 2026/27 will be equally spectacular, intense, competitive, relentless and chaotic.

The Championship has one team that averaged attendances of 62,000 last season (West Ham), another that averaged under 10,000 (Lincoln), and all of the usual suspects in between. Good to see you as always, Bristol City and Preston North End.

For people of my age, League One feels like a Football Manager save that’s gone on too long, with Jack Wilshere, Aaron Ramsey and Tom Cleverley all managing promotion hopefuls. Leicester and Sheffield Wednesday are the division’s big names, but each carry plenty of scar tissue.

League Two is always the most unpredictable division of the three, and it has a clump of eight teams considered front-runners by the bookmakers. It’s like the start of the Grand National, except the jockeys include Steve Evans, Steve Cotterill, Ian Holloway and Colin Kazim-Richards.

We’re into the 11th year of Not The Top 20 Podcast, and the fourth season of NTT20.COM. At this stage, we hope not to have to sell ourselves too hard. We like to think we’ve been serving up proof in the pudding for a while.

But, if you’re new here, know this: we absolutely love EFL football. We take it seriously, while celebrating the unserious bits. In the next two weeks, we aim to provide you with analysis, scouting, opinion, predictions, interviews, transfer coverage, laughs, league previews and bonus podcasts.

Our promise

We are Ali and George. Sam and Huw. Craig, Matt, Ryan and guests throughout the year, too. We put a huge amount of time and effort into making this the best written EFL content possible.

We want NTT20.COM to be peerless. We want it to be easy to read, enjoyable, interesting, insightful, thought-provoking, fun. We pay all of our contributors and are proud of it, because this industry loves to benefit from free expertise and labour. We will never do that. But it’s true that, if you can spare the price of a subscription, we are all rewarded more for our work and are able to increase and improve our offering. It’s a virtuous cycle in a messy digital media world.

Next season, we are making some changes for the better. You will be able to set your watch by our new, fixed content schedule:

• MONDAY - EFL Recap: a revamped version of our previous Weekend Notes. Pure, digestible information on the matches that happened.

• WEDNESDAY - The George Elek Column: opinion and editorials covering key issues and news stories.

• THURSDAY - Under The Lights / Dear Ali & George: a bonus podcast every week, either reviewing the midweek fixtures (UTL) or tackling your questions (DAG).

• THURSDAY - Not The Top Tables: our data offering, presenting and commenting on underlying performance data – starting in October.

• FRIDAY - Weekend Notes: we’re unleashing Huw Davies for the only all-EFL preview content you’ll ever need (or, indeed, find).

For a weekly £1.60 (monthly subs) or £1.40 (annual subs), you’ll receive all of the above. Free subscribers will receive one piece per week.

A.O.B.

As for Not The Top 20 Podcast, we often assume that you’re already all over that if you’re reading this, but perhaps not. If that’s the case, here’s the lowdown.

• Monday 10th August: 1-24 predictions episodes for each EFL division.

• Weekly from Monday 17th August: a 20-45 minute recap of each EFL league.

• Weekly from Thursday 20th August: a 30-minute betting show ahead of the weekend’s action.

All of these will be available on YouTube as well as your regular podcast provider. And, starting this season, a new series is in the pipeline. At this stage, we’re keeping schtum, but if all goes well, we’re looking at 72 new episodes in 2026/27…

We’re planning more live events this season, so keep an eye out for those. Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok for some other types of content. And let’s have fun, shall we? We need you, so don’t be shy – get involved in the comments section where possible. Most importantly, though: take the fan survey before it closes on Monday.

See you tomorrow. And the day after that. And the day after that. And…

Go well!