FORMER FOOTBALL LEAGUE DEFENDER AND LEICESTER CITY LOANS MANAGER
THE big three teams in the Championship – Fulham, Bournemouth and West Brom – have all dipped recently.
Between them, they’ve managed just three wins in the last 18 games combined, which is incredible when you consider how dominant they looked in the early months of the season.
But nobody should be fooled. They’ll be back. In the Championship, you play a lot of football in the winter. You’re going to lose games. You’re going to get beaten up and outrun. It’s very easy to go six or seven without a win, almost out of nowhere.
But, over the course of 46 games, the quality always takes over. They’ve also got the financial clout to freshen things up in January.
That isn’t easy. Going and getting top-quality Championship players is going to cost you in the region of £7m to £15m.
At that price point, nobody is going to be signing less than a three-year deal, so they’ve got to be good enough for the Premier League.
Nobody is going to come for six months unless they’re a topend loanee, and that will cost a fortune in wages.
Parachute payments help, but they aren’t a free hit. You’ve probably only got one or two mistakes in your locker. If you pay £15m-£20m for an attacker and get it wrong, you’re in big trouble. So you’ve got to be really cautious in this window.
Nevertheless, I’d expect reinforcements to arrive and with the quality already in the building, I fully expect two of the three to go up automatically.
They’re too good to stay this bad.
