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The EFL is BACK, and a weekend opening fixture list that includes four English Championship games live on TV kicks off with Sheffield Wednesday vs Southampton at 20:00 on Friday night.
Last season these sides were two divisions apart. Now they both belong to one of the most chaotic but entertaining leagues in European football.
Will this go true to the odds? Or will we see the first surprise of the season on the opening night?
Bet Builder odds: 4.20
England, Championship, Friday August 4th, 20:00 (UK)
Odds via bet365 as at 20:15, August 3rd 2023. Odds may now differ.
Sheffield Wednesday vs Southampton Bet Builder Tips: Saints to keep Owls at Arms length in opener.
The curtain rises on a new Championship season with a battle between two newcomers to the league. Sheffield Wednesday returned to the second tier via a Wembley play-off final defeat of Barnsley. Southampton ended a 10-year Premier League residency with a tepid relegation following a rock-bottom finish.
Both clubs will be under the guidance of new managers. However, as briefly mentioned in my ante-post Championship 2023/24 deep dive, the Owls dispensed with Darren Moore shortly after the Wembley win. Chairman Dejphon Chansiri’s decision to replace the popular Moore with Xisco Munoz was not well received.
A ponderous and underwhelming transfer window made matters worse, with Munoz stressing the need for reinforcements and meagerly promising, “We’ll give our best”.
In contrast, the Saints always had Russell Martin as their number-one target. A coach of high regard whose MK Dons side set a British record of 56 passes leading to a goal. Expect more possession-heavy football in pursuit of his side taking control but with general goals at both ends.
This is a great time to side with the men from the South Coast. Not only do their opponents look undercooked, but a host of top talent will still be available to their 37-year-old manager. The visitors possess too much quality all over the pitch and will be desperate to set an early marker down in the promotion battle.
It is fair to say Adam Armstrong has struggled since his big move to the Premier League. But having plundered 44 goals across his last two Championship seasons, he could be one player relishing a return to a lower level.
It was his 28 goals for Blackburn in the 2020/21 campaign that prompted Southampton to pay a reported £15m for his services. The striker has insisted he is willing to play anywhere for the club but confessed, “I want to be down the middle because that’s where I feel most comfortable.”
Martin will be looking to get a similar tune out of the 26-year-old as he did Joël Piroe at his former club Swansea. Piroe has fired 41 goals across his two seasons in Wales and, last term, topped the averages for shots per game with 3.3.
In Armstrong’s last campaign at this level, he amassed a colossal 189 shots from his 40 appearances at an incredible average of 4.73 per game.
It is safe to assume a player who smashed 28 goals across one season managed to hit the target on a regular basis. In fact, of those aforementioned 189 attempts at goal, nearly half were accurate.
Armstrong totalled 85 shots on target over that campaign at an average of 2.13 per fixture. So let us look at how frequently he hit the numbers required for this builder.
The Saints number 9 had at least three attempts at goal in 32 of his 40 appearances, with exactly the same number of games seeing him have at least one attempt on target. On 28 occasions (70%), he managed both those achievements in the same game.
A few shrewd judges have Armstrong as a dark horse to be the Championship top scorer. For this builder, we don’t even need him to get on the scoresheet here.
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