2020-21
With a pandemic exacerbating overstretched finances, few Championship promotion races could end up being more important than this one.
England’s second tier has been variously described as “a bubble waiting to burst” and “a runaway train ready to hit the buffers” recently, after its 24 clubs lost a combined £300m in 2018-19, with an average wages-to-turnover ratio of 107 per cent. And that was before coronavirus arrived. With huge chunks of income already lost and such problems far from over, some need the Premier League gold more than ever.