Now past the halfway point of the campaign, the Championship is once again at its exhilarating best. We look at seven reasons why it’s the league to watch in 2026.
Are Coventry City Choking?
Entering December, Coventry City held a 10-point lead at the top of the Championship table. Losing just one of their 18 league games to start the 2025-26 campaign, Frank Lampard’s free-scoring side looked in a perfect position to go on and seal promotion back to the Premier League after a 25-year absence.
Their start was one of the best in the second tier this century, with only four other clubs winning 43+ points from their opening 18 games of a season since 2000-01.
Even more sensational was their goal return (50 goals). Not since Blackburn Rovers in 1958-59 (55) has a second-tier side scored 50+ goals inside their opening 18 games of a season.
But a 3-0 away defeat at Ipswich Town on 6 December seems to have planted a seed of doubt in Coventry.
The Sky Blues have picked up just nine points from eight league games since the start of December; only six teams have won fewer in that period. The goals have dried up, too. Scoring just seven times from 124 shots, their 5.7% conversion rate is the second lowest in the Championship in that time, above only Oxford United’s (5.6%). In the opening 18 games of the season, Lampard’s side converted 15.3% of their shots, a ratio second best to only Derby County (16.1%).
Coventry’s lead at the top has now been cut to six points, but Ipswich, in third place, trail by eight and have a game in hand on them (and Middlesbrough in second).
The good news for Coventry supporters is that only one of the 23 teams to win 52+ points from their opening 26 games of a Championship season since 2005-06 has failed to win promotion to the Premier League. The bad news is that the one failure only happened last season, with Sheffield United taking 54 points from their first 26 games to top the table, but finishing in third – though in defence of the Blades, last season was the first in second-tier history in which two different sides ended up reaching 100 points (Leeds and Burnley).
The Opta supercomputer is still massively backing a promotion-winning season for Coventry, despite their recent poor form. Across 10,000 season simulations, they finished as league champions 70.3% of the time and won automatic promotion in 88.7% of sims.
Are Ipswich Actually the Best Team?
Despite the hard work of analysis teams and data scientists across the world of football, league titles aren’t exactly won on spreadsheets. Of course, real-life results on the pitch end up mattering more than the statistics that underpin performances, but expected points offer a good insight into teams that are over and underperforming.
Our expected points model simulates the number of goals scored by each side in each match based on the expected goals (xG) value of every shot taken. It then uses the simulated number of goals to determine the match outcome (win/draw/loss). Finally, each match is simulated 10,000 times. The expected points for each team in each match can then be calculated based on the proportion of simulations they win/draw/lose.
This is of course not an exact science, as xG doesn’t include a lot of factors, such as game state and dangerous periods of possession that don’t lead to shots. Nevertheless, it’s still a decent guide for how teams are performing.
Despite being third in the real table, Ipswich are top of the Championship expected points standings. Their expected goals performance at both ends of the pitch suggests they should have around four points more than they do (48.3 vs 44), while Coventry have overperformed by just over four points.
Arguably the biggest surprises in the expected points table are Sheffield United, Birmingham City and Southampton.
Sheffield United had a nightmare start to 2025-26, losing their first six Championship games – five under Rubén Sellés, before sacking him and bringing back Chris Wilder.
After a 3-1 defeat to Coventry on 4 November, Wilder’s side sat in the relegation zone with just nine points from 14 games. But a morale-boosting derby victory over Sheffield Wednesday after the November international break has helped them turn a corner. Since then, the Blades have picked up the most points in the Championship (22).
The underlying performance data suggests they are the third-best team in the Championship this season and should have 10 points more than they actually do. It’s a similar story for Birmingham and Southampton, who also sit in the bottom half of the table.
Suffolk Super Subs
Kieran McKenna has been the master of substitutions this season, with his Ipswich side scoring 11 goals off the bench across the opening 26 matchdays – three more than any other side. Add in three further assists from subs and the Tractor Boys also lead the Championship rankings with 14 goal involvements from substitutes.
Five of those 11 goals have come from Jack Clarke, who has scored in five separate Championship games as a sub in 2025-26 – three more than any other player in the competition. Those five goals have won his team three points, with his added-time equaliser against Derby County in August followed by an 83rd-minute winner at home to West Brom in October.
Armed with the knowledge above, it’ll probably come as little surprise that Ipswich are the most prolific scorers in the final 15 minutes of matches in the Championship this season, too (12). In fact, they have also conceded the fewest goals in that period of games (3), meaning their goal difference of +9 from the 76th minute onwards is the strongest in the competition in 2025-26.
A Surprise Promotion to the Premier League Might be on the Cards
There have been a few surprise promotions from the Championship in recent years. Luton Town stunned many by winning the play-offs in 2022-23 despite having one of the lowest budgets in the league, while Ipswich secured back-to-back promotions from League One to the Premier League with their Championship success in 2023-24.
It looks like 2025-26 might be ready to spring another shock, with teams like Preston North End, Millwall, Wrexham, Queens Park Rangers and Bristol City all within touching distance of the play-off spots past the halfway mark of the campaign.
Preston are currently fourth in the league table and just a win away from a spot in the automatic promotion places. They’ve made their best start in the second tier since 2006-07, while they haven’t played top-flight football since 1960-61.Alongside QPR and Bristol City, Preston have played the most consecutive seasons of Championship football, with 2025-26 their 11th successive campaign in the second tier. While QPR last played in the Premier League in 2015, Bristol City have had a longer absence from the top flight, last playing in the old Division One back in 1979-80.Millwall have only previously played two seasons of top-flight football in England (1988-89 and 1989-90), but this could be the season they finally win their place back. They’ve finished inside the top half in six of their last eight Championship seasons, with four of those seeing them end in eighth, just outside the play-off spots. Their form across 2025 was impressive, with only Coventry (92) picking up more points in the Championship than the south London club (76), while this is their best start (43 points from 26 games) to a second-tier campaign since 2001-02 (45).
Wrexham are one of the form teams in the Championship, having won their last four league games. Those results have elevated them to ninth place and only a point away from the play-off places. Could the Hollywood-backed club go on to complete a record fourth successive promotion campaign and become a top-flight club in England for the first time ever?
Hornets’ Sting in the Tail
Taking the lead against Watford hasn’t proved too difficult for Championship clubs this season. The Hornets have found themselves in a losing position in 17 of their 25 games – only struggling Sheffield Wednesday have been behind in more matches (18).
Holding onto that lead has proved much harder, however. Watford have staged some form of comeback in 11 of those 17 matches, winning a league-high six games from behind and drawing another five.
Their total of 23 points won from losing positions is 10 more than any other team in the Championship this season (Coventry have won the next most, with 13) and is more than any other club within the top four tiers of English football.
It’s also the most of any club when expanding the search across the other top five European leagues outside of England (Spain, Italy, France and Germany) and the respective second-tier leagues in each of those countries.
Their tally is now just one behind Sheffield Wednesday’s league-leading total of 24 points won from losing positions in the Championship last season, while it’s nine away from Ipswich’s 32 won from behind on the way to promotion in 2023-24 – the highest seasonal total in the Championship since 2014-15.
Including added time, Watford have spent 784 minutes and 36 seconds in a losing position, 32% of game time and 173 minutes longer than they’ve been winning. Going behind seems to spring them into action, however – they’ve got the best goal difference (+16) and best xG difference (+9.0) in the Championship when in a losing position.
Watford’s character to come from behind so often is even more impressive considering how young their squad is. With an average starting XI age of 24 years and 269 days, Javi Gracia’s side are the youngest in the Championship, 154 days younger than the next youngest (Norwich City: 25 years, 58 days).
Home Comforts
No side have a bigger variance of home and away form than Birmingham City.
Last season’s League One champions are one of the best teams at home in 2025-26, with only four teams winning more than their 26 points in front of their own fans. It’s a different story away from home, though, with Chris Davies’ side averaging the second fewest points per game on the road (0.62), above only bottom side Sheffield Wednesday (0.58).
As a result, Birmingham have won the highest proportion of their points at home this season (76%), just ahead of Portsmouth (72%) and West Bromwich Albion (71%).
West Brom started the season with three wins in their first four away games, but have since gone on a quite ridiculous 10-game losing streak away from home in the Championship. It was enough to spell the end of Ryan Mason’s tenure as manager on 6 January, with the 34-year-old sacked following the latest poor result on the road – a 2-1 defeat to Leicester City the night before.
That away losing run is the longest in the Championship since Luton’s 11-game run last season between September 2024 and January 2025 – one of only three losing away runs in the Championship era (since 2004-05) longer than the Baggies’ current sequence. WBA are now just one away defeat from equalling their club record of 11 successive away losses back in February 1927.
It’s very unlikely that they will break an EFL record, however. The longest run stands at 24 successive away defeats, set by Crewe Alexandra between September 1894 and December 1895.
Standout Stars
The race for the Championship golden boot looks like an entertaining one, with eight players already on double-figures in 2025-26 and another five just a goal away from joining them.
Leeds striker Joël Piroe topped the Championship scoring charts with 19 goals last season. That was the first time in 124 years that the top goalscorer of the second tier tallied fewer than 20 goals in a season, with Barnsley’s Andrew Swann the last to do so in 1900-01.
Adam Armstrong leads the pack this season with 11 goals, looking for his first Championship golden boot despite being so prolific at this level in the past. No player has scored more Championship goals since 2019-20 than the Southampton forward (79 in 174 apps), averaging a goal every 172 minutes over that period.
Armstrong has accumulated the highest non-penalty expected goals of any Championship player this season (11.4), while also totalling 2.4 expected assists – the highest combined total in the competition (13.8), just ahead of Anis Mehmeti (13.1).
In terms of chance creation, it’s Matt Grimes (57) who leads the way, but over half of those chances created have come from set-pieces. Sorba Thomas tops the ranking from open-play (39). He also has six assists overall, but trails Mikey Johnston (9), Marcelino Núñez (8), Ryan Giles (8) and Abdul Fatawu (7) in the Championship assist rankings.
Fatawu is undoubtedly one of the most exciting prospects in the Championship. Still only 21 years old, the Leicester winger is an exceptional ball carrier. No player has been involved in more shots following a carry in the competition in 2025-26 than him (50 – 37 shots, 13 chances created), while he also tops the rankings for take-ons both overall (181) and in the opposition half (147).
Just like last season, Hayden Hackney leads the Championship rankings for his on-ball involvement in sequences. The Middlesbrough midfielder ranks first for open-play sequences that lead to team shots (153) and ranks behind only Grimes (863) for successful passes in the opposition half of the pitch (831).
Ipswich midfielder Azor Matusiwa was pinpointed as an incoming Championship player to watch by us this summer, and he’s settled in nicely following a move from Rennes. The 27-year-old leads the competition for interceptions (46), while no player has regained possession from opponents to start sequences ending in shots as often as him (16).
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