Championship season Predictions – Gab Sutton

Birmingham look a value play for promotion at 2/1. With an ambitious owner in Tom Wagner and a driven manager in Chris Davies, Blues return to the Championship with enormous confidence.

The second-city outfit retain the best of a squad that smashed a Football League record by amassing 111 points in League One last season and have since strengthened significantly.

The B9 outfit might have been expected to simply build around a core of Ethan Laird, Christoph Klarer, Tomoki Iwata, Paik Seung-Ho and Jay Stansfield – and they’ve done that – but they’ve also signed players who will push those star men on another level.

Bright Osayi-Samuel’s arrival means Laird will have to up his game, while Phil Neumann and Eiran Cashin sign with the intention of starting in central defence, meaning Klarer’s spot is not entirely guaranteed.

Meanwhile, Tommy Doyle joins from Wolves to push Paik and Iwata, while former Celtic goalscorer, Kyogo Furuhashi, will be looking to start up top.

It’s a bit like signing 10 players in five, because the recruits push the pre-existing players on even further, while goalkeeper James Beadle, winger Demarai Gray and creator Kanya Fujimoto also strengthen the squad.

Birmingham are a possession-based side, but they’ve also added athleticism to the squad, which suggests a clear understanding of the ingredients required to build a successful Championship side.

Meanwhile, pre-season signs are hopeful. Wins over competitive La Liga and Premier League opposition in Sevilla and Nottingham Forest aren’t everything, but they certainly don’t quell the optimism around what’s possible in the most exciting era of Birmingham’s modern history.

Since coming up to this level a decade ago, Preston North End have found ways to stabilise in midtable, on one of the Championship’s lower budgets, without being an especially well-run club.

Initially, that was because of good management, in Simon Grayson then Alex Neil, who left in 2021, and more recently it’s been about defensive consistency and finding themselves on the right side of fine margins.

We may see some of the structural issues catch up with the Lilywhites, though, with manager Paul Heckingbottom having questioned his personnel in April last year.

The former Barnsley boss made it clear he wanted a complete rebuild, but instead he’s stuck with 15 of the players who featured last season, because there were only so many of them the club could offload.

That could make motivation tricky, in terms of pre-existing personnel, and it therefore means that the recruitment will have to do a lot of the heavy lifting.

And, while there are some positives in that regard, with defender Odel Offiah and wide man Thierry Small stepping up from impressive seasons in League One, the transfer window hasn’t been strong enough to outweigh some of the challenges in other areas.

PNE have lost their Player of the Year, too, in Aston Villa loanee Kaine Hesler-Hayden, now and Coventry, so a tough season looks in store.

Mihailo Ivanovic came alive after Alex Neil was appointed Millwall boss in late December. The Serb scored 11 goals then onwards in all competitions.

The 20-year-old didn’t get much of the kind of service he needed under Neil Harris, in a direct system, but under Neil the team played better football, and it played to his strengths a lot more.

Ivanovic can score all different types of goals, with either foot or with his header, belters from outside the box or diving headers from point-blank range. That versatility could serve him well over the course of a season, fed by the creativity of numerous key Millwall players.

The Lions have a young side, still with a bit of bite that’s central to their identity, but with a smattering of pace and flair in the mix as well, which should fashion chances for Ivanovic.

We could be entering an era of football in which strikers are asked to do so much in terms of their all-round game, that it compromises their ability to rack up the goals – Joel Piroe only needed 19 to be top goalscorer in the Championship last season for Leeds.

So, if Ivanovic can simply extrapolate his form from the second half of last season across a full campaign, he’d get to around 22 goals, which would put him top dog if it’s another low total.

He could get more than 22, as well, being of an age at which he’s likely to improve all the time and has a great chance of firing Millwall into the top six.