A chaotic early Championship picture is being driven in part by a midtable arms race, and two of the sides who had more eye catching summer transfer windows than most meet tonight as Swansea host QPR.

Swansea (3-4-3 DLDWLD 14th) v QPR (4-3-3 WWDDWL 11th)

Mercantile Credit Trophy >>> Wednesday October 22, 2025 >>> Kick Off 19.45 >>> Weather – Fine day but heavy rain by kick off >>> Liberty Stadium, Swansea, Wales isn’t it

There are some very strange goings on in the Championship – never a league that lends itself to the rational and sane at the best of times.

Ipswich, heavy title favourites, beaten again on Tuesday night. Not just beaten, but soundly put to sleep, 3-0, at home, by newly promoted Charlton. Southampton, widely tipped as the next most likely heir to the throne, are now two wins from 11 and languishing in 15th spot after a comprehensive beasting at Bristol City. Watch out for a tremendous Sinclair Armstrong assist on the third goal scored by Scott Twine – you laugh, but given the ball stayed within screenshot it ranks as one of his better first touches.

Hull City, who we had second bottom after a summer of turmoil and multiple transfer embargoes, climbed to fifth with their home victory against Leicester City. Norwich, meanwhile, we tipped the opposite way, and they’re now into the bottom three after three straight losses with the supporters in open revolt against the new ownership, manager Liam Manning and the decision to redevelop half of Carrow Road and shift a load of season ticket holders. Remember how people laughed at that Athletic prediction for the Canaries to be bottom three this year?

I still think Stoke and Preston will drop through that league like three-week old squid squirting through Pauline Quirke’s lower colon. But then why would you listen to someone who had Sheff Utd, Derby and Norwich in his top half? Stoke, Hull and PNE circling the drain?

For the last few seasons, the relegated parachute payment teams have had, if not quite a free passage, then certainly a huge advantage to return from whence they came. Over the last ten years Leeds have been promoted twice, Burnley three times, Sheff Utd twice and a play-off final defeat, Leicester twice, Norwich twice, Fulham twice, Southampton twice.

Equally, a lot of the teams coming up from League One have found they cannot compete. Plymouth, Rotherham (three times), Blackpool, Wigan (twice), Peterborough, Barnsley (three times), Wycombe, Charlton, Burton and MK Dons have all been relegated back within two (and usually one) season of being promoted. The last time the Championship’s relegation zone captured three teams who hadn’t already been in League One in the prior 18 months was 2014/15 when Millwall, Wigan and Blackpool dropped.

Look, it’s very early days yet, this league is a strange beast, but it is interesting watching myriad factors playing around with this conventional wisdom.

Ipswich have parachute payments, a brilliant manager, the best players, the biggest budget… but no longer have momentum, and potentially climbed too far, too quickly to start with. Look what’s happened to Luton. Southampton, sure, all the gear, no idea. Do not underestimate the mental toll of a Premier League season in which they won two games and finished with a goal difference of -60. Ipswich, Southampton and Leicester managed to scrape together 12 wins in last year’s top flight in total – QPR, during a 2011/12 Premier League survival widely derided as a nonsense farce, won ten by themselves. You can’t just turn it on and off, it’s not a bathroom light – well, maybe the one from Trainspotting.

Likewise, the three promoted teams from League One were never likely to trouble the bottom three this season. Birmingham shouldn’t have been relegated in the first place and are going to heave money at this until they’re a Premier League force in a new stadium. Wrexham have climbed too far, too fast, and the whole club and its infrastructure is racing to catch up… but you’d be unlucky to get relegated with their team. Charlton, meanwhile, have a manager who, may be Lord Cuntleroy of Cunt Town, but basically assures you of survival.

That leaves a number of clubs who’ve been hanging around 12th-19th in this league, year after year, season after season, in varying stages of decay, disorganisation and disgrace, very vulnerable. We had Preston at the front of that queue but in fact it’s near neighbours Blackburn who look like the first cab off that rank – like Cardiff, Derby and Sheff Wed before them, you can only be that badly run for so long before away games at Port Vale start coming home to roost.

Perhaps spooked by the cheque books of Birmingham, Wrexham and even Charlton chucked £10m in Charlie Kelman and co, quite a few of those mid-range second tier sides who’ve spent the last ten years playing away games at Preston started chucking a bit of dosh at the problem themselves. Christian Nourry remarked at the fans forum in August: "You have two teams that have come up willing to spend Premier League wages in the Championship to attract talent, and you have the bottom half of the league freaking out about it and responding by breaking transfer records left right and centre."

Derby looked to be chief among them. We wondered why John Eustace would want to abandon Blackburn in sixth at the time for a County side in the bottom three and beaten 4-0 at Loftus Road in his first game, and lo this summer we found out – 13 incomers, eight permanent, £10m in transfer fees, some big wages for the likes of Rhian Brewster and Lewis Travis.

They weren’t alone. QPR have been coy about it, but they spent relatively big on last summer’s disparate intake headed by Nicolas Madsen and Zan Celar, and doubled down again this year – albeit with Eze sell-on incoming. The Poku and particularly Kone signings were real eye-catchers. The Wrexham intake we know all about, but second only to them in net spend were Swansea who suddenly found the thick wedge of £10m for Celtic’s alright centre forward Adam Idah and the same again for left winger Zeidane Inoussa. They also won the race for Leyton Orient’s Ethan Galbraith, who I thought was pound for pound the best signing in the Championship this summer (though I did once say that about Jordan Cousins).

Three relegated teams not as good as everybody thought, three promoted teams who won’t go back down, and an arms race in the middle of the pack. No wonder it’s a footballing jumble so far.

The threat and opportunity is clear. We said in the summer it’s not a good year to be shit, because there isn’t a Paul Warne’s Rotherham coming up from League One to clog up a spot in the bottom three. You do have the catastrophe at Sheff Wed, but even they’re making a reasonable fist of things (pending administration and points deductions). It might in actual fact be a great year to be quite good, because it seems there are also no parachute-padded Leeds and Burnley sides this year hoovering up 200 points between them. The opportunity for a well-run, shrewd, mid-ranking Championship club to better itself might suddenly be on. Coventry look to be front and centre, but Millwall could very easily be a Premier League club next season with their recruitment.

What you don’t want to do is push the boat out, spend £6m on Adam Idah, beat half the division to Richard Kone, and then finish 16th in this Championship like you always did before – or worse still become embroiled in a complicated picture at the bottom. If you're knowledge hungry but time poor, let me just say our oppo profile on Swansea this week features the word "midtable" nine different times. The Swans, despite the summer outlay, are not playing well, and have so far only beaten teams in the bottom three.

Unless you get promoted, or more likely some of those Galbraith-like purchases turn into big sales, which then create FFP headroom, which you then reinvest, which you then build towards promotion, then rushing to outspend each other in the middle of this league can lead to disaster.

At the moment, QPR look the more likely of these two to take advantage of the Championship’s free and easy, keys-in-the-bowl season. After all, a 6-0 win tomorrow night takes us back into sixth place if other results go our way.

Links >>> Midtable x9 – Oppo Profile >>> Robbie James – History >>> Busby in charge – Referee >>> Official Website >>> Planet Swans — Blog and Forum >>> Swansea Independent - Forum >>> Wales Online — Local Paper >>> The Jack Army — Forum >>> SOS - Fanzine

Below the fold

Team News: The latest injury update from the club said medium-term absentees Kwame Poku and Ilias Chair, along with resident blue badge holder Jake Clarke-Salter, were all available for selection at the weekend. That felt like a stretch, given their respective injuries and records, and so it proved with none of them making the bench. The trio were all involved in a 4-1 development squad win at Bournemouth on Monday instead. Poku got a 45-minute run out and scored after six. Chair also completed the first half but, having been subbed after 11 minutes of his first comeback, Clarke-Salter this time lasted only 29 minutes. No news of retrospective action against either Paul Smyth or Amadou Mbengue for their weekend indiscretions so it’s pretty much the same squad to pick from as Saturday.

Manuel Benson, who scored on his last appearance against QPR for Burnley in April 2022, missed the weekend draw at Southampton with a hamstring injury and is unlikely to be fit for this one. He will be assessed prior to kick off along with Zeidane Inoussa.

Elsewhere: Coventry made it five wins in a row and their best ever start to a season, unbeaten in 11 matches, with their 2-1 win at Portsmouth on Tuesday night. Frank Lampard’s side go four points clear and even the goal they did concede at Fratton Park was their first in nearly six full games. In this weird Championship season detailed above, the Sky Blues seem best set to capitalise – and that is a season preview prediction we got spot on.

Something else we called was all three promoted sides staying up, and that’s bad news for Blackburn first and foremost. If we assume Sheff Wed are gone, And with Hull performing well, Rovers sank deeper into the mire with a 3-1 home loss to previously-shite Sheff Utd on Tuesday night. Seven defeats from ten games for Rovers so far.

All of this makes it sacking season. As we head towards that November international break, expect a few trigger fingers to start twitching. Watford might even have made it through a second by then but let’s see how they crack on against West Brom tonight in the eighth coming of Javi Gracia.

Liam Manning must be at the forefront of thoughts in this regard. Norwich moved into the bottom three with a third straight loss at Derby, and fans at Carrow Road are in open revolt about mismanagement and stadium redevelopment. Will Still won’t be far behind after Southampton’s loss in Bristol. Still’s 18-month PR campaign isn’t surviving the acid test so far. New factor for our season previews – have you hired a manager from the Jake Humphrey “High Performance” Podcast? Go back ten spaces.

How secure is Marti Cifuentes after Leicester’s latest loss at Hull? Too many draws for the Foxes, and the latent threat of a nine-point deduction which would currently place them second bottom.

I’m still expecting Preston Knob End and Stoke to come back towards their natural habitat, and midweek losses to Birmingham and Wawll further that belief. Had Paul Heckingbottom’s side triumphed at Deepdale over the Blues, I’d have been including Chris Davies in this chop list as well. Too busy fighting the manager on the touchline at the weekend to prevent his lavishly furnished team losing at home to Hull – a Jack Robinson own goal and red card for dissent… you’re playing my favourite song.

After all of that I guess Wednesday is a night of teams much more where we thought they might be – Joe Lumley keeping goal for Sheff Wed at home to Boro, Wrexham hosting Oxford and Watford already looking for a future ex-Mrs Malcolm at home to West Brom.

Referee: John Busby from Oxfordshire showed a season high nine yellow cards when he had Swansea for a 1-0 loss at Birmingham a month ago. QPR are without a win in nine appointments with this official. Details.

Form

- Swansea are the definition of a midtable team with three wins, four draws and three defeats so far, but it is hopefully instructive that their three victories so far have come against the bottom three at the start of this midweek round – Sheff Utd H, Sheff Wed A, Blackburn A.

- QPR had been unbeaten at Loftus Road in their first four matches, with two victories, prior to the weekend when they suffered a first defeat at the hands of Millwall. Last year it took the R’s until December to win two at home. After 9 games last season Rangers were 22nd after a 2-0 defeat away at Derby.

- That Millwall loss may have ended a handy six-match unbeaten run that had carried QPR into the early play-off picture, but the R’s remain in decent touch away from home. Julien Stephan’s side have won two and drawn one of the last three on the road and since the start of April, no side has earned more away points in the Championship than QPR (16 – P8 W5 D1 L2).

- With 41.6% of the possession, Bristol City away was the eighth QPR win in a row where the R’s have succeeded while having less of the ball than their opponent. In defeat to Millwall on Saturday the R’s had 58% making it 11 games since Rangers were able to win while having more of the ball – 2-1 against Blackburn in February.

- Swansea have scored one goal or fewer in seven of their ten Championship games so far. The Swans haven’t scored more than two goals in a league game since a 3-3 draw with Oxford on the final day of last season, thought they did put three through both Crawley and Forest in the League Cup.

- A score draw has been a good bet in Swansea’s home league games so far. Since beating hapless Sheff Utd 1-0 in their first game here they’ve drawn 1-1 with Watford and Millwall and 2-2 with Hull here as well as losing 3-1 to Leicester. Last season they finished 10-6-7 on this ground and ended up 11th in the Championship.

- Swansea are winless in four home league games (D3 L1), last going longer without victory between October and December 2023 (6).

- QPR’s worst performance in 2024/25, by a distance, was the Boxing Day 3-0 loss at Swansea in which all the damage was done in the first half. The Swans went on to complete a league double against Marti Cifuentes’ side – the first Swans’ double over Rangers since the 2012/13 Premier League season when Michael Laudrup’s side won 5-0 at Loftus Road on day one and added a 4-1 home win in the corresponding fixture.

- Prior to last season’s debacle, QPR had won three of the last four visits here 1-0. That after failing to win any of their first eight visits to this stadium and not winning in Swansea at all for ten visits going back to the old Vetch Field in 1981.

- Who doesn’t like a left field Slovenian striker signing? Swansea’s Zan Vipotnik stuttered to seven goals in 26 starts and 18 sub appearances in his first season with the club 24/25, but has already bagged four in the league this term from seven starts and two sub apps, and six goals from nine starts and three sub apps in all comps.

- QPR have won eight of their last 11 away league games against Welsh clubs (D1 L2), including four of their last five (L1). They've kept seven clean sheets during that time.

- All of QPR’s goals so far have been scored by a player aged under 30. The last time we got this far into a season without a 30+ scoring a goal was 2019/20 when Geoff Cameron and Marc Pugh both netted against Charlton on December 21.

- QPR recovered four points from losing positions in the week before the international break – the win at Bristol was their first having trailed in a game since Preston on Easter Monday, 13 games prior. The last time they won from behind before that was the corresponding fixture with Preston at Loftus Road on December 21.

- Swansea have had the fewest big chances in the Championship this season – 11.

- Hat tip to @AnalyticsQPR on this one, but away teams are tending to fair better in the Championship this season. Not including this midweek round it’s H 33% | D 34% | A 33% this season, at this point last year it was H 49% | D 28% | A 23%

Prediction

In our Prediction League for 2025/26 we’ll once again be handing out prizes for being top at Christmas and overall winner from The Art of Football - sample the merch from our sponsor’s newly extended QPR collection here. QPR_Hibs won last season’s Prediction League at a canter and is lending his thoughts to this year’s previews – we’ve had three new leaders of this year’s table in as many games and it’s JB007007 who goes into this week on top...

“I am currently still away on my summer holiday so, instead of my usual prediction ramblings, I am going to regale you with this ‘story’ from my youth.

“When I was about 15-years-old, I went to Twickenham Odeon to watch the football-based war film Escape To Victory. As I sat there trying to work out what the hell was happening with the plot, I felt myself being deeply moved by the stirring music that was being played during the sporting action. I stayed right until the end of the film’s credits to see if I could find out any information about the composer but, sadly, it was not forthcoming. As I was leaving the cinema I bumped into the manager who was tidying up in the foyer and so I grabbed my chance. ‘Excuse me,’ I said to him. ‘I've just been to see Escape To Victory and I wondered if you could tell me anything at all about the score.’ ‘Yes,’ he replied, "it finished 4-4 and Sylvester Stallone saved a penalty."

“With another away trip to Derby hot on the heels of the midweek game at Swansea, it will be interesting to see what changes Julien makes to the starting line-up. I expect some squad rotation with the strongest team back for Derby (surely the more winnable game.) Swansea have had scoring draws in three of their five home league games so far this season (one win, one defeat) and I can see another score draw happening here. Koki to be so, so happy with the goal.”

QPR_Hibs Prediction: Swansea 1-1 QPR. Scorer – Koki Saito

LFW’s Prediction: Swansea 0-1 QPR. Scorer – Richard Kone

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Pictures - Ian Randall Photography

Myke added 11:05 - Oct 22 Cheers Clive. We don’t tend to do chaos well, so hopefully we don’t get dragged into something unsavoury. It might be an opportunity to push for the promised land, but my first instinct is to look over my shoulder.
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derbyhoop added 13:56 - Oct 22 Oh dear. LFW predicting a QPR away win. We're fcked.
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TacticalR added 19:43 - Oct 22 Thanks for your preview. Yes, a chaotic season so far. At one point it looked like QPR could get into the top two (Millwall are currently third). That statistic from @AnalyticsQPR that there are as many away wins as home wins shows what a strange season it is. The Swans fans seem completely unenthused by their team, but we are only two points above them. The question is, can we get going again after that knock back by Millwall?

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TwoHalves added 20:57 - Oct 22 Thanks, Clive. Struggling now to erase the image of a ‘three-week-old squid squirting through Pauline Quirke’s lower colon’ but I’m sure that, given time, I’ll be OK.
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phegarty added 21:13 - Oct 22 Do you have to have so many "c*nt"/"f*ck" references in your reports? And your forum guidelines say "do not post bad language"!
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Northernr added 10:20 - Oct 23 When we’re talking about Nathan Jones I’m afraid so, yes.
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