Buzzin Championship Football

It’s highly likely that the 2010/11 nPower Championship football league will be more competitive than last season: Newcastle United became the sixth club in the last 20 seasons to win the Championship the season after being relegated from the Premiership.

Middlesbrough – another club with recent Premiership experience – are current favourites. Manager Gordon Strachan has bought in Kris Boyd from Rangers; if Boyd reproduces his outstanding goalscoring record in the Championship, he could be play a vital part in Boro’s promotion bid.

Although the clubs relegated from the Premiership shouldn’t be entirely written off, Burnley look the best equipped for a serious promotion challenge: Chris Iwelumo’s arrival from Wolves looks like a shrewd investment. Both Hull City and Portsmouth have off field issues that could hinder their efforts to make an immediate return to the top tier.

Two of the teams that reached the play offs last season should challenge for promotion places. Nottingham Forest were outstanding at home last season and Leicester City – where former Swansea City boss Paolo Sousa replaces Nigel Pearson as manager – look capable of maintaining their form from 2009/2010. Cardiff City’s prospects are unclear, but they should still be capable of a top ten finish, a prospect that both Ipswich Town and QPR will be hoping to achieve.

It’ll be interesting to see how the new arrivals from League One will perform. Champions Norwich City return after one season but may have to settle for a mid table finish; Leeds United will probably lead the division in attendance numbers, but their season may depend on how well new signing Billy Paynter adapts to the Championship. Millwall should avoid relegation but may have to be content with a bottom half finish in their first season at this level since 2005/2006.

A number of teams look as if they may struggle. Scunthorpe always seem to be punching above their weight but selling Gary Hooper to Celtic leaves The Iron without a proven goal scorer. Barnsley need to improve at home, Crystal Palace entered administration but eventually owed their survival to an outstanding away record that culminated in a win at Sheffield Wednesday on the last day of the season.

However, every club in the nPower Football League Championship will start on equal terms when the season starts on the evening of Friday August 6th, when Watford travel to Norwich City (7:45pm kick off, live on Sky Sports 3).

Paulo Sousa has left Swansea City by mutual consent and is pursuing the vacant post at Leicester City after the Welsh club granted permission for their Championship rivals to enter talks with the Portuguese manager.

Despite taking Swansea to the brink of the play-offs, Sousa has not endeared himself to the fans, players or board it would appear and the club have decided to allow him to leave sooner rather than later, before too much harm is done within the club.

Leicester City are understood to have agreed a compensation package with Swansea as Sousa still had two years to run on his contract.

Having arrived from a short stint at QPR that lasted just 26 games, Sousa led Swansea to within a point of the play-offs in his first season in charge at the club, but should really have done better in the run in when Swansea picked up just three wins in the final 13 games.

The club boasted 24 clean sheets during the season and the defence shipped just 37 goals throughout, but they also failed to score in 18 of their games and the goal shy attack managed just 40 goals all season.

Despite denials from both parties the relationship between Sousa and club chairman Huw Jenkins has often appeared strained and I get the feeling that Swansea will ultimately be glad to resolve the issue now before too much damage is done.

Nigel pearson joins Hull City

Nigel Pearson has been confirmed as the new Hull City manager, he will replace caretaker Iain Dowie who was hired short term by Hull but failed to keep the club in the Premier League.

Pearson arrives from Leicester City where he has led the club to the League One title and to the Championship play-offs in his two seasons in charge.

Leicester chairman Milan Mandaric said:

“Nigel’s done a fantastic job. It would have been wrong of us to deny him the chance to speak to another club. We were greatly surprised to receive the initial approach from Hull. The past few years have been a turbulent time for both me and the supporters at Leicester City. We have been striving to get a degree of continuity at the club. After speaking to Nigel, we have reluctantly agreed that if he wished to pursue this opportunity at Hull, we would permit it.

I am deeply grateful to him for everything he has done for the club. He has put together the foundations of a strong squad and it is now up to us to find a manager to build on those foundations.”

Hull City’s head of football operations Adam Pearson added:

“We are delighted to welcome a manager of Nigel’s experience and calibre to the club. We feel it is a real coup for Hull City and that Nigel is the best man to mould the existing squad into a competitive Championship squad. Nigel had two outstanding seasons at Leicester City and I feel sure that this experience and winning formula will ensure the very best chance of bringing success back to the club.”

Iain Dowie was hired by Hull with nine games remaining following the departure of Phil Brown in March, he was always on a hiding to nothing but hoped that he had shown enough to be considered as a long term replacement for Brown.

While I am sure he was given consideration, Hull City appear to have shown patience in finding the right man for the job and on the basis of Pearson’s recent managerial history he has to be the right man.

United Against Malaria - Sign the ball

United Against Malaria (UAM) is a collective of individuals and organizations with one goal; to beat this dreadful  disease.

Using the World Cup in South Africa as a focal point, footballers from around the world are united in supporting the cause, among those involved are Cameroon legend Roger Milla, USA striker Landon Donovan, Manchester City and Ivory Coast defender Kolo Toure, Malian striker Frederic Kanoute and French World Cup winner Patrick Vieira.

UAM are using the tournament to promote international awareness of the disease, by acting now, an unprecedented increase in mosquito net coverage across Africa can be achieved by the end of 2010, saving millions of lives by the next World Cup in 2014.

With the tournament now well under way, UAM are asking football fans to ‘Sign the ball’ to show their  support for the cause. Add your name and join the winning team that will beat malaria.

Join the team at UAM by signing the ball on facebook and becoming a Facebook supporter of the campaign and check for latest news and updates on the United Against Malaria website.

Coca-Cola Championship has retained its place as the fourth most watched league in Europe

English football continues to be a big hit with football fans all over the world.

Coca-Cola Championship has retained its place as the fourth most watched league in Europe with a total audience of more than 9.9m fans. Crowds grew by 0.3% this season and averaged 17,949.

Only Germany’s Bundesliga (13.1m), the Premier League (12.9m) and Spain’s La Liga (11.0m) can boast more fans through the turnstiles, with The Football League’s top division, once again, attracting more supporters than Italy’s Serie A (9.1m) and France’s Ligue 1 (7.6m).

Crowds at matches in the Coca-Cola English Football League have broken the seventeen million mark for the first time in 50 years.

A total of 17.1m supporters attended the 1,656 league matches played during 2009/10, an increase of 4.4% on last season and the highest aggregate crowd figure since the 1959/60 campaign.

The Football League continues to enjoy sustained attendance growth with gates having more than doubled during the last 25 years. The average Football League crowd is now higher than 10,000.

Crowds for matches in Coca-Cola League 1 and Coca-Cola League 2 averaged 9,136 and 3,853 respectively, with crowds in the former increasing by a remarkable 21%.

These figures continue to outstrip those of comparable levels of the game in Europe’s other major footballing nations. League 1 crowds are more than 75% greater than those in Germany and more than three times higher than those recorded in Italy and France. League 2, attendances are twice those of their German equivalents and almost five times those of Italian football.

Football League Chairman, Greg Clarke, said: “Attracting more than seventeen million fans into their grounds is an outstanding achievement by Football League clubs, particularly in the current economic climate.

“Our clubs are focussed on attracting a new, family audience to football and those efforts are clearly working.

He went on to add: “I would like to thank everybody that has been to one of our matches this season for supporting their club and our competition.”