Best Of

There are certain unsavoury and soul-sucking aspects to the Prem, but I'll never understand how anyone who loves football can criticise the product on the pitch for entertainment value etc - it's the best league bar none. Wycombe take precedence, obviously, but otherwise I'm watching a Prem game - we're blessed to live in an era of such high-quality football.

Xavier is wearing 7 in the pictures with David Wheeler.

If my maths is correct and Wiki has the figures right, Louis has now clocked up 871 games. I never knew he played for Wrexham 16 years ago and scored 15 goals in a season for them.

Just musing, but I wonder whether it would actually be better for the clubs long-term development NOT to get promoted this year.

(Just to make it clear I really, really want us to be promoted this season!)

But we seem to have developed a strong squad (on paper) that will probably take a little while to gel, particularly with a new head coach.

If we don’t go up, that squad would almost certainly be strong enough to be one of the favourites for promotion next season and I’m thinking it may be a lot easier for the team to come together at the top of League 1 rather than at what is likely to be the lower end of the Championship.

(Although overall there are probably more benefits in going up this year)

Hugo Boss vibes from the interview which is ok at this level but if he wants to get to the top there will have to be a conversation about Moncler in the future.

Luckily for him there is a Moncler outlet in Bicester Village where you can get the stuff at a very reasonable discount.

Luke is a total superstar.

Luke O'Nien is a fan of Mike

I suspect that would have been the initial plan when Lommy took over.

Realistically I don’t think that the owners would have expected promotion straight away, so I imagine the plan would have been to deploy capital over the next few years in League One to build the infrastructure of the club. Then, with more solid foundations, to attack promotion and consolidation in the championship with a pipeline of talent coming through the academy system

The opportunity to go up this season may have resulted in the desire to accelerate the process and throw more money now at players that they hope will cope in the Championship

They are far more benefits going up this season, hence why so much money has been spent in January. I really don’t get your argument!

There was an interesting match choice the other night on Sky - Chelsea v West Ham versus Middlesbrough v Sunderland. Needless to say I watched the championship game as that league is so much more ‘competitive’ than the identikit teams in the Prem and is a bit of a yawn fest at times now.

A few ‘big’ fixtures but a lot of overhyped dross a lot of the time but the TV 💰💰💰play heavy on clubs minds.

I do wonder whether the Championship is now closer to a ‘traditional supporter experience’ than the Prem (more accessible generally), is still a really good standard and as a product it’s only behind the Prem as most attended leagues in the world.

For clubs like Wycombe, being an established Championship club would be a better experience for the supporter. Sure, I’d love to see us in the Prem one day but a decade of championship football would be amazing. The league ticks a lot of boxes for me and I do wonder whether that product could spin out from the clutches of Sky and sell itself as the premium product to a standalone broadcaster.

In essence it does become Prem 2 allowing teams to be more competitive for another 20+ years until the cycle starts again and we then have….Prem 3!