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Opinion: Will The Championship Be Tougher Than Ever?

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Ever since the club were relegated from the Premier League, our fan base has longed to be back there. As a loud and proud set of supporters, we out sing every Championship club out there and so we need a challenge in the Premier League. It’s a shame that our team isn’t quite as good as our singing though. Nonetheless, this is a target and a dream every year.

More recently we have wanted to get into the Premier League via the play-offs as that is a realistic target for the amount of expenditure that the club is willing to put in, in order to buy the best players. This season, we had high hopes of that and despite a disappointing end to the fixture list in terms of results, this kind of climb up the table would have been unimaginable in the Lee Clark era. What I like to refer to as, the ‘dark ages’.

It was a bit of a kick in the teeth this time out however, because I felt that we could easily match the teams who did go into the play-offs such as Derby County and Sheffield Wednesday both whom we definitely matched in the league encounters against them. It felt achievable that we could have been promoted from the Championship. Whether we are ready for the Premier League is an entirely different article, but I felt that we could easily have had a shot at promotion last season.

In my opinion, this season will be trickier. Aston Villa, Newcastle and Norwich are all better teams I think than the teams that were promoted from the Championship last season. Villa and Newcastle in particular have spent big already in this transfer window, recruiting top class players such as Gayle. Therefore the calibre of these sides are much better and I think it will be very tricky to pick up points.

I also think that last season, there wasn’t much of a relegation battle. 3 teams were a lot weaker than others and it was with regret that they unfortunately had to be relegated. This season, Burton are in the league with a point to prove and they have good young players who have been coached to be difficult to play against. So overall, the standard of the league has greatly improved from last year.

I hope that we start spending money in the transfer window or even getting loan signings in such as Wilson in order to really keep up with this growing standard.

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