EFL: It’s Championship time…

The Game Football Podcast

The Times

Sports, News, Lionesses, Sport, World Cup, European Championships, Champions League, Premier League, Football, Entertainment News, Soccer

3.4 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 7 August 2025

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The Championship starts this weekend. To quote Gregor Robertson – “With some teams no one has a Scooby what is going to happen to them.” Big spending Birmingham City and Wrexham join the party, bringing some Hollywood glamour, how will they fare? Ipswich Town start as strong promotion favourites and both Leicester City and Sheffield Utd have fifty million pounds worth of parachute payment to help them on their way. At the other end it is anyone's guess – the spot light is on Hull, Sheffield Wednesday and Oxford…but how will Mark Robins do at Stoke and have Blackburn made the right signings? In the Championship any one of ten or fifteen teams could spring a surprise.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello and welcome to the game football podcast from The Times.
0:07.9	This is our EFL Extra Show with me, Tom Clark and the former Football League legend Gregor Robertson.
0:13.7	Throughout the season we bring you reaction and analysis to the highs and lows of the championship,
0:18.7	League 1 and League 2.
0:20.7	And today we are in preview mode
0:22.4	once again. The toughest league in the world, an unpredictable and thrilling test for all teams
0:27.7	and with a huge prize on offer at the end of it. The championship is back and we are here today
0:33.8	to try and work out what on earth is going to happen over the next nine to ten months.
0:39.9	Gregor, we're back and I'd say this is the toughest job in football previewing the championship.
0:46.5	Toughest job, never mind managing in it or playing in it, previewing it, it's got to be one of the
0:50.8	hardest things in journalism, surely.
0:52.4	It starts right up there, yeah.
0:53.7	I mean, there are some teams that you haven't got a scooby what's going to happen one of the hardest things in journalism surely it's right up there yeah i mean there are some teams that you
0:55.9	haven't got a scooby what's going to happen with them like i would say
0:58.7	Watford has won this year i'd say stokes another every year you think
1:02.5	surely this year stokes eight years now in the
1:04.8	in the second tier never finishing the top half you think mark robin's got a good
1:09.2	manager made some good signings maybe this is the year? Probably not. You know, there's obviously been some, you know, the fact that the relegated teams have kind of managed to bounce back in the first or second year as perhaps becoming an issue that's slightly easier to say that they'll be in the mix, but there's always a surprise, there's always a lutein or a Coventry or someone,
1:31.3	Sunderland. So, like, yeah, still full of surprises of championship
1:35.1	and full of entertainment and drama.
1:38.2	Yeah, absolutely. You mentioned some of those teams that have gone down coming up
1:41.4	and talk about that promotion race. We'll get to that in just a second before we begin though a quick look at the opening weekend in league one and league two.
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 15 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Times, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The Times and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.