As the only manager to steer four different clubs to promotion from the second tier of English football, Neil Warnock has words of encouragement for all those looking to follow in his footsteps during the coming season.“When you look at the sides I took up from this division,” he says, “we were never the best team. But what I always had was a very, very good dressing room. If you ask other managers in the league about facing my teams, they’d probably say we were near the top of the list they didn’t want to play against.“Yes, of course, money counts in the Championship. And the three teams coming down are always going to be firm favourites to go straight back up. But the Championship is about so much more than that.“It is a hard league with hardly any breaks, totally relentless. And there’s no such thing as an easy game, with the bottom teams capable of beating the top every week. That’s why teams like mine, who most didn’t fancy at the start of the season, were able to win those four promotions.”Wolverhampton Wanderers, one of those three relegated sides looking to earn an instant return to the Premier League, get the new season underway tonight (Friday) when they host Blackburn Rovers.Then comes a series of intriguing weekend fixtures — including Southampton’s first league outing since last May’s ‘spygate’ scandal as Tonda Eckert’s side travel to Watford, while Burnley host West Ham United in a meeting of the other two sides to drop down from the top flight — before the first round of games culminates with Monday’s all-Welsh affair between Cardiff City and Wrexham.There was a dip in quality, if not drama, last time out compared to the 2024-25 campaign, which saw Leeds United and Burnley rack up 100 points apiece on the way to automatic promotion.Now, the Championship looks to be in strong shape once again.Eckert’s Southampton are still in the Championship (Warren Little/Getty Images)Jarrod Bowen, following his decision to stay at West Ham after relegation, will bring undoubted extra quality to a division that still has the added attraction of no VAR during the 46-game regular season, after clubs voted against its introduction earlier this year.The promotion play-offs have also been extended down to eighth place for the first time.Fans should once again flock to the Championship, which last season posted its third-highest aggregate attendance figure since the Second World War.In total, 12,223,766 fans filed through the turnstiles, slightly up on the 12,170,350 from the previous season and not far behind the post-war high of 12,725,488 in 2023-24. The only other 12 million-plus season came in 1947-48.Will West Ham’s presence — their 61,500-capacity London Stadium is comfortably the biggest stadium at this level since Manchester United’s one-year stay in the second tier during the mid-1970s — see a new attendance record set across the division?Only time will tell, but there’s no doubting the popularity of a competition that prides itself on an air of unpredictability, especially when compared to the Premier League.What were football transfers like before the transfer window?Tifo Football“I’m looking forward to the Championship,” adds Warnock, whose four promotions to the top flight came at the helm of Notts County (1991), Sheffield United (2006), Queens Park Rangers (2011) and Cardiff (2018).“I do miss it in the summer months. We’re so fortunate in this country, in terms of the crowds we get. Even lower down (the pyramid), I’ve been going to Torquay a bit, and they had nearly 4,300 on Saturday (at home to Horsham).“It’s not even the top level of non-League, it’s a division down (National League South, the sixth tier of the English game). And 4,300 fans were there! No other country has a football setup like ours.”Predicting any competition is difficult. Throw in the Championship’s propensity to shock on an almost weekly basis and it becomes nigh-on impossible. A quick look at the predictions from the writers of this parish a year ago tells us as much.Hull City to be relegated and Leicester City for the play-offs? So thought yours truly, who also tipped Louie Barry to be the second tier’s Player of the Year, only for Sheffield United’s Aston Villa loanee to make just six starts (no goals) and end the campaign in League One with Stockport County.The comments are also interesting in retrospect.“Ipswich are in turmoil, they’ll do a Luton,” said one reader. “Manning and Norwich will be in the top eight,” added another after they had been tipped to struggle. Norwich just missed out on that position, coming ninth, but head coach Liam Manning was nowhere to be seen by then, having been sacked in November with his team second-bottom of the table.The number-crunchers at Opta fared little better with their supercomputer.Eventual champions Coventry City and runners-up Ipswich Town were tipped to finish fourth and third respectively before a ball had been kicked last August, via the running of 10,000 simulations of how the campaign would unfold. But the computer also had Sheffield United to finish top (they came 13th in real life) and Leicester as runners-up (23rd, meaning back-to-back relegations), along with Hull 17th (sixth, promoted via the play-offs) and Wrexham 21st (seventh, missing the play-offs by two points).What nobody could have foreseen a year ago when trying to second-guess how the Championship would pan out was the ‘spygate’ scandal that saw Southampton not only kicked out of the play-offs final but also handed a four-point deduction for the coming season.Head coach Eckert being hit with three Football Association misconduct charges means the saga may yet cast a further shadow over the new campaign, especially as the German could be facing a lengthy ban.Nevertheless, expect Southampton to be strong. They were the standout team in the second half of last season — Eckert’s team claimed 48 points from New Year onwards, four more than title-bound Coventry — and have since added Villa loanee Lewis Dobbin, who was impressive when farmed out to Preston North End in this division last season. The loans of Cyle Larin and Daniel Pertz have also been made permanent, though losing Shea Charles to Fulham of the Premier League is a blow.Middlesbrough, the other party in the spygate affair, have been busy in the market on the back of selling Hayden Hackney to top-flight Everton for an initial £16.5million and a 20 per cent sell-on clause in old boy Morgan Rogers’ £117m switch from Villa to Chelsea.Their new signing Will Lankshear, who netted 11 times at this level last term for relegated Oxford United on loan from Tottenham Hotspur of the Premier League, has already started to pay back the initial £10million transfer fee, courtesy of a spectacular scissor-kick winner against Wrexham in the Carabao Cup.Other notable arrivals at the Riverside include United States international Sebastian Berhalter and Radek Vitek, the 22-year-old Manchester United goalkeeper who impressed on loan at the Championship’s Bristol City in 2025-26.Like Southampton and as mentioned above, Norwich finished strongly after a slow start. In fact, had the regular-season gone on another couple of weeks beyond May 2, Philippe Clement’s side may well have gatecrashed the play-offs. Andre Brooks is a good addition from Sheffield United, but it is perhaps continuity that will most help Norwich this time around after retaining the key figures from that charge up the table.Elsewhere, Wrexham and Birmingham City, promoted together from League One in 2025, are looking to improve once again, while Millwall and Derby County have retained the core of the squads that finished third and eighth respectively in May. All four are likely to be in the mix for a top-eight berth.Sebastian Berhalter (right) has joined Middlesbrough (Stu Forster/Getty Images)As for the relegated clubs, Wolves, fresh from replacing Rob Edwards with Cesar Peixoto as coach, boast proven Championship goalscoring pedigree in Adam Armstrong and Raul Jimenez. The latter is fresh from a World Cup where his three goals helped Mexico to the quarter-finals. Kieran Trippier also brings plenty of know-how to their defence — like Jimenez, he is 35 years old — after joining on a free from Newcastle United.West Ham, meanwhile, received the perfect tonic to their relegation when captain Bowen opted to stay. There have been big-money departures in Crysencio Summerville and Mateus Fernandes. But coach Nuno Espirito Santo, who built one of the finest Championship sides in recent memory nine years ago when he was Wolves manager, surely has sufficient quality to mount a concerted push for the title.Burnley have become something of a yo-yo club over the past five years, bouncing between the top two divisions with two promotions and three relegations. This time around, however, they feel more of an unknown quantity with new Belgian coach Nicky Hayen at the helm.He’s done well with Club Brugge and Genk in his native country, leading the former to the championship in 2023-24. But Maxime Esteve and Jaidon Anthony, sold to RB Leipzig and Brentford respectively, will be missed. Florentino Luis’ switch to Ipswich for £4million or so less than Burnley had been contractually obliged to pay for him a few weeks earlier, when making last season’s loan from Benfica permanent, was not a great look.“There’s some good teams in there this season,” says Warnock, whose managerial feat in achieving four promotions to the top flight is matched by only Steve Bruce (Birmingham, 2001-02 and 2006-07; Hull, 2012-13 and 2015-16).“You’ve always got to look at the three teams who have come down, even though I was surprised Wolves changed their manager. But, as always happens in the Championship, someone will emerge strongly.“Middlesbrough, Birmingham, Southampton, Norwich… one of them will come out and have a real go. I don’t see much beyond those teams we’ve just mentioned. There are plenty with potential, so who really knows?“That’s the beauty of the Championship. It’s why we all love it so much.”