10-year form chart, English Championship promotion contenders

Perhaps this year they can do it.

Maybe, just maybe, this is the year that Cardiff City can break their five-year playoff hoodoo and finally earn promotion to the Premier League.  Few would argue that they're deserving - the Bluebirds Dragons have finished thereabouts in English football's second tier for half a decade as well appearing at Wembley in FA and League Cup Finals - yet seem always to develop a flopsweat of Nixonian proportions during the season's most crucial weeks.

Cardiff and their rivals for automatic promotion - at this stage, mainly a rejuvenated Hull City and Gianfranco Zola's time-shared Watford squad - are without question the best three teams the Championship have to offer.  As an added bonus and in contrast to some other upstarts ascendent, all three should also have the resources to make a splash should they rise into the the Premiership, albeit through vastly different methods.

The peloton features PYTs of management, Gus Poyet and Dougie Freedman (whose current and ex-clubs find themselves in the chase).  It should come as no surprise that a surging Nottingham Forest - with their demonstrable playoff chops - find themselves firmly ensconced in fifth position.

Each team has its own narrative: Cardiff's collection of close misses, the Return of the King at Forest and even an Egyptian connection at Hull City made especially poignant by that country's recent football history.  The Premier League will be a richer - and more curious - league for their impending presence.

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The times, they are a-changing

Yesterday, I found one of my all-time favourite lucky finds – an old World Football magazine which proudly boasted to contain full 2006-07 squad lists for every major European league.

As I sat back to enjoy again articles like “Gamble on Govou gets France going” and “Sticky start [at Poland] for Beenhakker”, it struck me at the amount the shape of sport has changed in as little as five years.  That year was a particularly interesting one: Roy Keane earned a reputation as the games’ best young manager as he led Sunderland from bottom of the Championship to runaway winners at his first attempt; Red Star Belgrade sold star striker Nikola Zigic to Racing Santander (who has later moved to Valencia and Birmingham City); while the “Five Young Stars of the Copa Libertadores” were Rafael Sobis, Fabiano Eller, Wason Renteria, Leandro Somoza and Cristian Riveros.

The most striking example of how much the game has progressed is in the amount of player turnover at English clubs.  The table below details the 2006-07 English Premier League squads and how much they have changed over the subsequent five years.

Club	06-07 squad	Players in 11-12 squad	06-07 Players on loan	Total players still in EPL	Relegations
Arsenal	32	7	2	15
Aston Villa	24	2	0	10
Blackburn	29	3	0	6
Bolton	23	3	0	8
Charlton	31	0	0	2	**
Chelsea	20	9	0	13
Everton	26	7	1	13
Fulham	27	0	0	3
Liverpool	27	7	1	14
Man City	26	3	0	8
Man Utd	22	9	0	16
M’Brough	29	4	0	9	*
Newcastle	21	3	0	10	*
Portsmouth	26	2	0	3	*
Reading	26	1	0	5	*
Sheff Utd	32	3	0	2	**
Tottenham	27	6	1	12
Watford	30	3	0	4	*
West Ham	28	3	0	10	*
Wigan	25	2	0	8

Keep in mind this was before set 25-man squads, Financial Fair Play and numerous debt crises and takeovers.  The squads are as listed in “World Soccer” Magazine, October 2006 edition and can include promising youth team players.

With the number of players still in the EPL after five years, it’s not surprising that Watford, Sheffield United and Charlton were relegated that season.