Leicester City, Leeds United and Southampton were never meant to go down. FA Cup victors two years ago, only six years since winning the Premier League, Leicester City’s squad was brimming with superstars, including the league’s in-form player – James Maddison, the supposed mercurial wildcard to ignite England’s 2022 World Cup assault. Yet somehow, they conspired to get relegated. Southampton’s 2022/23 campaign always hinted at ultimate doom. However, it was their eleventh consecutive Premier League season, and they boasted the league’s greatest-ever free-kick taker (apart from Beckham, obviously). Scarcely the ingredients for demotion. Then there’s Leeds United, hardly Premier League stalwarts in recent years. But they’re, well…Leeds United. Under the brilliant Bielsa, they seemed destined to return to Europe’s elite, only for a series of unfortunate events to plunge them into the Championship again – now they’re relying on an ex-Norwich City manager as their saviour (how did that work out for Leicester last season?).

These three behemoths appear well-set to dominate this Championship season. Despite losing Maddison and Harvey Barnes for mega millions and a host of free transfer departures, Leicester’s squad still overflows with players who should be too good for the Championship. On top of that, they splashed out nearly £10m each on additional established Premier League players, Coady and Winks. Ex-Manchester City coach Enzo Maresca also brought in Callum Doyle from his old club, and Leicester have finally purchased a goalkeeper to replace the irreplaceable Kasper Schmeichel. Leicester aren’t intent on hanging around in the Championship for long.

Southampton haven’t yet embarked on a megabucks trading spree. At the time of writing James Ward-Prowse still graces their roster. But Roméo Lavia appears to be off to Liverpool for some £40m. Whether the Solent Beckham is there or not, the Saints’ squad looks super strong. Nathan Tella helped Burnley destroy the league last season, and Ryan Manning is a progressive acquisition at left back. Leeds have been busy loaning out players across Europe, and ownership uncertainty has perhaps delayed transfer dealings. Still, Leeds splurged £8m or so on Ethan Ampadu and overall look too strong for the Championship.

The promoted teams appear to have more about them than your average League One new boys. Ipswich reached imperious footballing levels after Valentine’s Day. Plymouth always win. And chaotic Sheffield Wednesday proved they could blow automatic promotion but prevail through a crazy play-off semi-final despite giving Peterborough a four-goal head start. These three will be joining the Championship after accumulating a combined League One points-total unheard of for promoted teams.

Of the rest, Norwich and Watford, still artificially sustained by parachute payments, will be hoping for a promotion push. Can Wagner rekindle The Canaries’ X factor? Will Valérien Ismaël last until the end of August? Coventry, Sunderland and Middlesbrough aim to cast off the despondency of play-off failure. Coventry’s close-season player trading, more Premier League than Championship, involved selling Viktor Gyökeres for £20m and using that bounty to secure the services of Ellis Simms. However, Championship spending has been relatively meagre outside the parachute clubs and Coventry. It’s a league where the financial might of the relegated teams seems more potent than ever. But strip away thoughts of FFP and parachute payments, and the 2023/24 Championship season offers an intriguing collection of ambitious clubs with rich histories plotting a route back to the big time. Look through the teams; it has the feel of a 1970s Division One table. All the stadiums are befitting of at least the second tier. No more squeezing through Bedfordshire terraced houses to watch their team for Championship fans.

This is the context for my 2023/24 Championship projection. I’ve simulated the season 5000 times to determine the likelihood of different outcomes. Team ratings are based on time-weighted shot averages (for and against) – it’s like a really simple expected goals model, but it gives a pretty good indication of a team’s underlying attacking and defensive strength. However, as it’s pre-season, I need to make some adjustments. It’s tricky to extrapolate last season’s form for promoted and relegated teams. Plymouth’s 101 points or Ipswich’s 101 goals won’t necessarily translate into stellar Championship form. The correlation between outperformance in League One and the Championship is weak. Prior to Ipswich achieving a 66 goal-difference in League One, the next best was Wigan’s 60 in 2017/18 – they finished 18^th in the Championship, on 52 points, the following season. Even so, I’ve applied factors to the attacking and defensive ratings of the new teams to take account of the increase or decrease in the strength of the new league (the factors are based on the past performance of promoted and relegated teams).

On top of shot-based performance, I’ve also added an allowance for squad value and club turnover for the team ratings. This is my attempt to allow for elements that aren’t picked up in retrospective shot data, like player trading. It also ensures that account is taken of the financial clout of teams that may have played poorly in the previous season, but have the underlying potential to do well if managed properly. This prevents the model from underestimating the capability of, say, Chelsea for my Premier League projection.

So, here’s the full projection, using the above method.

As alluded to at the start of my review, the three relegated teams dominate the likelihoods for the top positions. In 83% of the scenarios, one of last season’s Premier League teams are champions. These likelihoods obviously flow through into the promotion picture.

The model gives both Leicester and Southampton a 67% chance of promotion, Leeds are 51%. The best promotion chances of a non-relegated team are Middlesbrough on a minuscule 14%.

Are the relegated sides really that much better than everyone else? Well, there is a reasonable level of uncertainty surrounding them all. They wouldn’t have been relegated from the Premier League if everything was rosy. And I think it’s fair to say that Leicester, Leeds and Southampton all revelled in dysfunction last season. All three now have new managers, and the ineptitude may persist. I have built additional uncertainty into my projections by assuming a variance around the central estimate of the team ratings. The chart below shows the wide range of likely points totals.

Will the relegated teams live up to their spending power, or will their Farke (and Martin and Maresca) be much worse than their bite? How does my projection compare against the betting markets?

Sporting Index also have the three relegated teams as the likely highest points scorers. But my expected points estimates are significantly higher than the market’s for Leicester, Leeds and Southampton. This means that my expected points total is below the market’s for most other teams. Swansea are the only other team my model estimates will significantly outperform the Sporting Index central points total.

It’s similar for the promotion odds, where my model sees significant value in all three relegated teams. Perhaps I am overestimating these teams, but anything over evens for Leicester to be promoted seems exceptional value.

A quick word about the rest of the league. After the top three my projection sees the rest of the league being incredibly tight, with ten points separating 5^th and 17^th. My model has Ipswich as the best of the rest (below the top 3 and Middlesbrough), based on an extrapolation of their extraordinary League One form at the end of last season. As discussed above, great League One performances don’t necessarily translate into Championship points. However, my model’s expectations for Ipswich aren’t too far from the betting market’s.