Four promotion strategies for Championship clubs.

4 promotion strategies for Championship clubs.

Just be sensible

Even if you have a rich owner prepared to splash the cash in a promotion push the key is to think sensibly.

As a club buy into a style of play.

Find a coach who believes in that style and signs up to the values you have as a club and back them.

Have someone with a level head at boardroom level who understands and can communicate variance. Sometimes the process can be perfect but the outcome can be poor, and sometimes that can just be luck.

For signings that might just mean doing a quick sanity test through a simple checklist.

What is the style of play you want to play?
What are your expectations in data output from a player in that position?
Explain how the potential signing fits in with that style?
Who are they replacing and why is this player better suited?
What happens to the players this new signing will move further from first team action?
Do we have players already in the squad who have the skills to complement them or do we need additional new signings?
What alternative players were considered?
What is the cost of the whole deal and is it good value for money?


As long as a club can answer these questions well for each signing they will be on the right track.

Copy Watford FC

People who love thinking about football have known of the Pozzo family for years. Their Udinese teams regularly finished in the top half of Serie A whilst operating on a much smaller budget than their rivals.

The scouting team at Udinese were famous for discovering young players of high potential, like Alexis Sanchez, Samir Handanovic and Kwadwo Asamoah, playing in leagues not normally scouted by top tier clubs.

Their talent for scouting players allowed them to compete with clubs operating on much larger budgets. Rather than competing for established players, and having to pay high transfer fees and large wages, they embarked on a strategy of signing potentially good players for relatively little money and hoping that some of them reached their potential.

The problem with this strategy is that you end up with a lot young players of high potential but cannot offer them competitive football to develop.

In Italy the traditional way to do this is either by loaning players out, or selling them with buyback clauses. A quick check of Wikipedia shows me that collectively Juventus, Inter and AC Milan have 85 players out on loan, mainly to lower league domestic clubs.

Udinese went for a different approach. The problem with loans are that you don't control how they use your player. If you lend someone a Bugatti you don't want them towing a caravan with it. So why would you loan them a £1m player and allow them to misuse their talents? To get around this problem the Pozzos bought a whole club.

The Pozzos chose Granada, then in the third division in Spain, but with back to back promotions they suddenly were in charge of a La Liga team.

If it worked so easily in Spain could it work in the most lucrative market of them all, England?

With promotion now worth a guaranteed TV payment of around £180m it was worth the gamble. And with Watford desperate for new owners the Pozzos moved to take over the club.

In a quick piece last week I wondered, given the similar wage bills between mid table Spanish and Italian clubs, and Championship clubs how easily a team like Celta Vigo would win the Championship? Most people thought very easily.

 And Watford fans were quick to point out that a few loans from Udinese and Granada of fringe players added enough quality to their squad to make the playoffs within one season, and promotion (via the goals of Granada/Udinese loanees) within 3.

There is a question as to whether this has been a good thing for Udinese, and if the Pozzos now treat Watford (having now sold Granada for a profit) as the number one club in their group. A good argument that this is the case is found here.

But for Watford there are no doubts that having access to a large talented pool of players helped them gain promotion and establish themselves in the top division.

Which makes me wonder why no other clubs operate in this way?

If I were involved in an ambitious championship club I'd be looking for partner clubs as a priority. Share the risks and rewards.

That £180m guaranteed prize money pot for promotion probably look quite tempting to some European clubs. Would the fringe players of Sevilla or Inter be good enough to bulk out a squad looking for promotion? Very possibly. Would they loan you those players for minimal cost for a £50m chunk of that money payable on promotion? Very likely.


Premier League link up

England probably has the best generation of young players I've seen. The technical and tactical qualities of the squad are among the world's best. The problem is they are all at the biggest clubs and not getting game time.

Most of these players fit into the inbetweener group.

They've reached the level where the club know they can make it but aren't yet able to offer them more than a few minutes each game.

They are too good for U23 competition so don't get played. This means they don't get any competitive football outside of the league cup and England games.

In the last England U21 squad only Lewis Cook, Demari Gray and Ryan Sessegnon are playing regular Premier League football.

Tom Davies and Dominic Calvert-Lewin have been regulars too so I'll include them too - but they are starting fewer matches than last season

Opening it up to the last 54 players to appear for England U21s, and who remain eligible for selection only 14 have made more than a handful of top flight appearances this season:

Trent Alexander-Arnold
Joe Gomez
Aaron Wan-Bissaka
James Maddison
Ben Chilwell
Harry Winks
Marcus Rashford
Lewis Cook
Demari Gray
Ryan Sessegnon
Tom Davies*
Dominc Calvert-Lewin*
Rueben Loftus-Cheek*
And I'll also include Reiss Nelson as he is playing in a top league too albeit because he wasn't getting starts for Arsenal.

So of those 54 players who have made up the Toulon squad and U21 qualifiers we have
5 goalkeepers, all owned by PL clubs and none playing.
18 defenders, 13 owned by PL and 4 regulars (Holgate and Kenny perhaps arguable)
18 midfielders, 15 owned by PL and 7 regulars
12 attackers, 9 owned by PL clubs and 3 regulars

The best young players in England just don't play top flight football unless they are spectacularly good - and in the cases of Foden and Hudson-Odoi, not even then.

I have no doubt that a team with Solanke, Hudson-Odoi and Lookman up front with Foden, Dowell and Maitland-Niles behind would take the Championship by storm.

Now such a dream team won't happen because of loan rules.

But could we arrange things better so that players did get experience?

Is it that the players don't want to drop a division? I'm not so sure I think this generation are keen to play and are happy to play in Holland, where outside of a few clubs the standard is similar or lower.

Are the clubs reluctant to loan into the Championship? Perhaps, this is where clubs should do more to promote themselves with a defined style of play. I'd be much happier loaning a player to Norwich, who know how they want to play, rather than a team who change manager and style every few months.

If I were involved in a Championship squad I'd be targeting PL clubs with a surplus of talented young players and setting out why they should be loaning us their best 3 young players who are unlikely to start many games.

Rather than taking Martina and Williams from Everton if I had been involved from Stoke's point of view I would have been targeting Dowell, Calvert Lewin, Davies, Holgate, Lookman, Kenny level players. As great as they are to have as cover at Everton a full season playing in the Championship has to be better for their development.

Loaning players should be a win/win situation. If the incentives for loaning aren't right then it is in everyone's interest to change them.

Invest all your scouting resources in one specific market and settle them in.

Imagine a country where there are only 2 fully professional divisions yet the level of talent produced is so high that the third or fourth choice national XI would be in the world's top 10 sides.

Where a slightly archaic system means that 3rd tier footballs compete in a national championship but are technically classed as amateurs. Where these skilled players receive a salary of between £18k and £30k a year and former players make up a third of the world cup winning squad.

Welcome to France, and welcome to the world's ripest hunting ground for potential stars.

I had a quick weekend scout of Ligue 2 and the 3rd tier and found some really good players. Good enough for the Championship certainly.

Rather than a scattergun approach with talent being bought in from all around the world why not specialise in one specific area? Make your club the best place for French talent to break into the English game. Invest in off the pitch support to make the transition easier, language lessons, finding places to live, helping partners and parents settle down, and building support networks.

Wigan (with the three amigos signings of the 1990s) and Bolton (under Sam) were pioneers of this but it seems to have dropped off. Whenever I hear of £10m signings failing to settle I always wonder about the pastoral side of the club. Is enough being spent to ensure that clubs maximise the value of their investments in talent?