Oh, it is with such joy and pleasure, excitement, energy, all of those other things that I say, welcome to the championship, one to 24, pre-season's prediction podcast, brought to you by Not the Top 20 pod and sponsored by Betfair.

I am Ali Maxwell with me, George Alec, George.

Oh boy.

It's the most wonderful time of the year.

We will be talking through the championship.

Now sometimes when you do these and you mash a load of teams together into something

resembling a league table,

your gut feeling has like 16 teams in the top half.

And that is the case for League One.

That is not the case for the championship.

This feels like almost the opposite in a way that it sounds kind of weird because I'm kind of criticizing the way that the strength of the league looks right now.

But I also think it's quite exciting for fans listening to this pod to hear.

The strength of the competition is maybe not as strong as League 1 and League 2.

More chance for your team to achieve success.

Is that one way of looking at it?

Yeah, it is. I mean, I don't want to put people off listening to achieve success. Is that one way of looking at it? Yeah, it is.

I mean, I don't want to put people off listening to this now,

but it is, I think, probably the weakest championship in,

well, since the time we've been doing the podcast,

the last five or six seasons.

Doesn't mean it won't still be entertaining.

Well, I think it's going to be even more so.

...