Making the jump to the Championship

[Kenneth E End]

...and it's financial cost for L1 and L2 clubs. A very good listen from a very good podcast all round.

Jumping from L1 to the Championship is the most difficult jump and it'll become even more difficult with solidarity payments to the Championship doubling in a few years time.

http://d3d4football.com/d3d4-podcast-extra-money-ball/

 

[GEORGE]

I would think based on infrastructure alone only Sunderland could do it successfully.

 

[Kenneth E End]

We’ll typical L1 clubs don’t have £35m playing budgets...

 

[BelizeHatter]

How did that infrastructure work for them for the last few seasons?

Always has and always will be, room for the smaller well run clubs, in all Leagues. Look at the Prem. Probably half the Championship are bigger and better names fan base etc. Than half the Prem.

 

[Craig]

We’re minted so it’s not gonna be a problem this time around.

 

[Bartonyellow]

We managed it well enough for 2 seasons and on gates of 5,500.
We only went down with the last kick of the season otherwise we would have had another season at it.
It’s not all about money and there is no reason why you cannot be successful next season in that Division, if your raisin d’etre is to stay up.

 

[SF_]

We’re minted so it’s not gonna be a problem this time around.

Are you though?

 

[SF_]

We only went down with the last kick of the season.

Moult actually looked a bit sorry when he scored that one.

 

[Craig]

Are you though?

Yeah.

 

[SoutheySWFC]

Craig, you're better off than you are were but let's be right you're not wadded....

Scary point is Huddersfield will be the spenders cos of the PP from being successfully shit in the PL.

 

[Craig]

Aye but we won’t get gang raped again in January, unless we don’t go up of course, I mean it’s not a certainty.

 

[joethegill]

There's certainly no doubt that the biggest gulf in the EFL these days is the one between this league and the one above. A few stats:

• 6 of the last 10 League One Champions were teams who came down from the Championship the year before
• Over the last 10 years, 36% of teams relegated to this level get promoted straight away
• Luton are on course to become the 3rd club in 6 years to get promoted from League Two to the Championship in consecutive years (Rotherham and Burton the others)
• On the flip side, a grand total of zero clubs who've been promoted from League Two since 2012 have suffered immediate relegation - although Accy and Wycombe are testing that record this season
• Last season was the first season in over a decade where all of the relegated sides from the season before all achieved promotion straight away - and it was from this league.

The fact that 2 of the 3 relegatees from the Champ last season are in the running for the autos this season suggests that this is a trend likely to continue. Looking at the bottom lot in the second tier - Ipswich, Bolton, Millwall, Rotherham, Reading & Wigan - I'd wager that of the three who come down, at least 2 will finish in the play-offs at the very least next season. Bolton are the anomaly as they're an absolute mess off the field and may not even exist as a Football League club next season, but the others would all fare well. You only have to look at Sunderland from last season who were frankly appalling, yet still are in the title race (winning the games in hand a pre-requisite, obviously) to see how vast the quality gap is.

You'll get a few clubs who might buck the trend and stay up for a couple of years above their station, but they nearly always find their way back here before too long. Talking of double-promotions earlier, only 2 clubs in the last 10 years have had back to back promotions to the Premier League, and they were Norwich and Southampton in consecutive years - not exactly the smaller clubs.

 

[Kenneth E End]

Yet in terms of central funding, the difference isn’t that great between the Championship and L1 in comparison promotion to the Prem:

PL: £100m++ a season
Champ: £6.5m (set to double in a couple of years)
L1: £1.5m
L2: £1.1m
Conference: £2.50

I may have overestimated the bottom 3 leagues there...

 

[SF_]

Need to get lucky with some quality loans in your first season or two, as well as investing in younger players who can make money down the line. Gradually strengthening across the team each window and buying replacements in advance.

First season up we had Jordan Pickford & Adam Reach. Second season we had Aiden McGeady....

Sold Garner, Wright, Hugill & Cunningham since then for around £14.5m (£2m going to Port Vale). Robinson is also set for a £10m+ move to Bournemouth this summer.

Players like Pearson, Davies, Browne, Earl, Storey, Maguire & Barkhuizen will be worth an insane amount of money but signed for something like £1.3m, although two are youth products.

Also had failures like Grimshaw, Horgan & Boyle but financially the hit is minimal. Although we do have a very rich owner, absorbing our losses.

Need to sell to survive at that level and have a plan, Bolton for example are just over-loaded with old players, Parkinson is too short sighted to do well at that level.

They still offer decent wages (don't pay them like...) but they'd be better off looking at out of contract players in Scotland, Ireland and the leagues below, as opposed to players like Gary O'Neil, Marc Wilson, Andrew Taylor & Jack Hobbs.

I think Burton also suffered by not having a long term plan at that level but that's to be expected with their budget.

 

[Ciderup]

Need to get lucky with some quality loans in your first season or two, as well as investing in younger players who can make money down the line. Gradually strengthening across the team each window and buying replacements in advance.

First season up we had Jordan Pickford & Adam Reach. Second season we had Aiden McGeady....

Sold Garner, Wright, Hugill & Cunningham since then for around £14.5m (£2m going to Port Vale). Robinson is also set for a £10m+ move to Bournemouth this summer.

Players like Pearson, Davies, Browne, Earl, Storey, Maguire & Barkhuizen will be worth an insane amount of money but signed for something like £1.3m, although two are youth products.

Also had failures like Grimshaw, Horgan & Boyle but financially the hit is minimal. Although we do have a very rich owner, absorbing our losses.

Need to sell to survive at that level and have a plan, Bolton for example are just over-loaded with old players, Parkinson is too short sighted to do well at that level.

They still offer decent wages (don't pay them like...) but they'd be better off looking at out of contract players in Scotland, Ireland and the leagues below, as opposed to players like Gary O'Neil, Marc Wilson, Andrew Taylor & Jack Hobbs.

I think Burton also suffered by not having a long term plan at that level but that's to be expected with their budget.

I agree with this.
We went up at the same time as Preston and both clubs have survived, competed and are now doing well in the Championship. Loans are extremely important, as we found with a very young Tammy Abraham. Get them right and you have a good chance.
Nurturing and selling young players is also correct. For PNE selling the likes of Garner, Hugill etc, we've sold Flint (bought for £300k, Bobby Reid (£0) and Joe Bryan (£0) for a combined £24M, enabling us to sign players of good quality ( Adam Webster (£4.5M), Andi Weimann (£2.5M)) etc for lower fees. You have to get it right though as mistakes are expensive ones.
If you can survive the first season or two, finances suddenly seem to ease, apart from in comparison to the ex Prem boys with their PP. The Championship does seem to be awash with cash although that might be clubs pushing things too far (a la Birmingham).
Essentially, most clubs coming down into the Championship carry on spending for a season to try and get straight back up then sell everything as finances are suddenly a lot tighter as their PP's halve.
The step up is certainly quite a big one from this division and there are no weak sides. Any team going up from this division will be at a major disadvantage, obviously, but it's worth the battle for survival as it's a cracking division to play in with some serious big hitters in it, bigger crowds and some great stadiums.
On Burton, most supporters, myself included, wanted them to survive again but they were never going to be able to sustain Championship football with all possible respect to them, not yet anyway.
I would be very surprised if the clubs that eventually come down (maybe not Bolton this time due to finances) aren't pushing to go back up again as there is, with utmost respect to this division ( we were here long enough to know), quite a step up in standard.
The exception to all this is Sheffield United, their Manager is superb to be fair.
Good luck to all those competing to get upstairs, you'll love it!

 

[Gladders]

Big difference in finance between Championship and lge 1 compared to lge 1 and 2. Only have to look at priceoffootball on twitter and the graphs he posted.

For lge 2 most clubs are around the 3m mark, apart from a few outliers in lge 1 (the ex prem/champ clubs) its not a lot of diff in lge 1. But then the jump up in the champ is massive, wages of 10m is low!