Those of you who had West Ham United, Leicester City and Salford City locked into your title-winners acca for the EFL season will, after the first two games, be left disappointed.
All three ante-post favourites suffered defeats at the weekend, shock defeats in the case of the first two, which mean the tipped trio find themselves winless at this embryonic stage.
If you’d read my 1-24s here at bet365, perhaps you’d know better! I didn’t have any of those three in the automatic promotion spots…
So, is there a common theme linking the three clubs and their early-season underperformance? Well, yes and no.
I would say West Ham’s biggest problem has been going into a season with a group of players who, rather than single-mindedly preparing for the rigorous challenges ahead, have thought about playing in the Championship as their unwanted back-up plan if a move doesn’t go through, because they consider themselves above the level.
On the one hand, that means they do have viable first-team options for England and Argentina in their attack in Jarrod Bowen and Taty Castellanos respectively, it means they have somebody who was playing in the Champions League last season in Manor Solomon… they think they’re above the level because they are.
On the other hand, there can be real cultural challenges that come with that. Kyle Walker-Peters, James Ward-Prowse, El Hadji Malick Diouf, Konstantinos Mavropanos, Jean-Clair Todibo and Tomáš Souček have had their eye on a move all summer, and that can incrementally impinge on the mentality of the group.
Whereas, with Salford City, it’s been less about players wanting to move and more about implementing a whole new style with players who aren’t suited to it.
Peter Cklamovski had a reputation in the J-League for his teams being capable going forward, but weak and passive defensively which is why he couldn’t deliver success to some big clubs in that nation.
The Aussie, molded in the Ange Postecoglou school of management, has implemented an expansive style, but you’d question whether Ollie Turton, Will Aimson and Ade Oluwo are the best defenders suited to playing this style.
Meanwhile, they try to press with Macaulay Langstaff up top, after the striker signed from Millwall and reported back to training overweight, which means he needs somebody from midfield to do his pressing for him, which can open the team up in other areas.
I think Leicester City have a blend of West Ham and Salford’s problems. They’ve got an element of players thinking they’re above League One, quite falsely on recent evidence, and an element of a manager in Russell Martin introducing a style that doesn’t suit the personnel.
It’s not so much the Foxes playing out from the back, and being patient, that I’d take issue with, it’s that there doesn’t seem to be a thought for what to do when they don’t have the ball.
I felt in pre-season that their decent in-possession stuff would be undermined by how easy it looked for opponents to create chances against them, either by stealing the ball in their defensive third or simple balls over the top.
Given how vulnerable they looked in the second half of the opening day 1-1 draw at Notts County, where a team with more quality would have punished them, and in the first half of the 2-1 home loss to Burton Albion, City look all at sea.
Caleb Okoli might be a former Italy international but he looks absolutely shot on confidence right now, and left-back Luke Thomas appears some way off the level as well.
Meanwhile, they’re trying to play football with Oli Skipp, who is very limited as a footballer for all his effort and endeavor, being tasked with playing conductor.
It’s one thing trying to emulate a similar style of play to the one they had under Enzo Maresca, when you’ve got Mads Hermansen, Ricardo Pereira, Jannik Vestergaard, Callum Doyle and pre-meltdown Harry Winks to carry it out, but without the right personnel, combined with much worse out-of-possession organization, it’s a major risk.
I still think West Ham will put a run together, perhaps sooner than the other two. I still think Leicester and Salford might get it right around autumn, either with Martin and Cklamovski getting their act together or under new management.
But all three look set to be some way adrift of the automatic promotion conversation by October, and they’ve given themselves a lot of catching up to do.
