On Friday, the bright lights of St. Andrew's will kickstart the 2025-26 Championship campaign.

The ever-chaotic second tier is set for another wild instalment, with some fascinating stories set to unfold at both ends of the table. 

Birmingham City and Wrexham, backed by their A-list celebrity owners, will aim to upset the big boys and push for back-to-back (or in Wrexham's case, back-to-back-to-back-to-back) promotions.

On the flip side, Ipswich Town, Leicester City and Southampton will be aiming to bounce back from their relegations from the Premier League.

Last season's beaten play-off finalists, Sheffield United, who are under new management, will have the bit between their teeth, while Coventry City and West Brom are all in with a shout. 

The Championship also welcomes back Charlton Athletic after a five-year hiatus, but what does the supercomputer think will happen?

Here, we take a deep dive into Opta's predictive model to find out who they think will be the winners and losers this season. 

Brady's Blues back in business

After a turbulent first season under the ownership of a consortium led by Tom Wagner, which includes NFL great Tom Brady, Birmingham got back on track last year. 

Their last Championship campaign saw them go through three permanent managers. Wayne Rooney had a 15-match stint, and they were relegated to the third tier for the first time since 1995. 

But they bounced back as Chris Davies, who was Ange Postecoglou's senior assistant coach at Tottenham, took the reins and led them to the League One title, amassing 111 points in the process, the highest tally ever in a Football League or Premier League season.

And the supercomputer predicts them to fare much better in their latest Championship venture, even if only Middlesbrough, Swansea City and Derby County are deemed to have tougher starts to the season.

Birmingham welcomed 10 new faces into their ranks, including the permanent addition of former Celtic star Kyogo Furuhashi, as well as a loan deal for Tommy Doyle and a return to St. Andrew's for Demarai Gray. 

The predictive model hands Birmingham a 21% chance of finishing in the play-off places, compared to a 13.1% probability of being relegated. Their chances of clinching back-to-back league titles are rated at just 2.3%. 

They open the season at home to Ipswich in what is just the second time the two teams have faced off in Birmingham in their first league game of the season. 

The other time was a 3-1 win in 1995-96 when Birmingham were newly promoted to the second tier, and the Tractor Boys had just come down from the Premier League. A good omen for the Blues, perhaps?

Wrexham's Hollywood dream

Just three years ago, trips to Dorking Wanderers, Wealdstone and Yeovil Town were the norm for Wrexham, who were taking part in their 15th non-league season.

But following a titanic tussle with Notts County, which saw both teams amass over 100 points in the National League, Phil Parkinson guided the club back into the Football League, and they have not looked back since. 

Second-placed finishes in League Two and League One saw Wrexham become the first team in the history of English football to be promoted in three consecutive years within the top five divisions. 

They will play their first second-tier match in 43 years and 86 days when they face Southampton in their opening fixture of the season. It's the longest gap between matches in England’s second-tier since Doncaster Rovers returned in 2008 (50y, 105d).

Wrexham are assigned a mere 2.8% chance of automatic promotion, with only Oxford United (1.0%) viewed as less likely champions than them (1.2%). 

In the Opta supercomputer's 10,000 season simulations, Wrexham finished in the top six in just 9.6% of scenarios, being relegated back to League One in 20.2%.

But backed by Hollywood owners Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, Wrexham have made some shrewd additions to their squad to try and challenge at the summit. 

Liberato Cacace arrived from Empoli for a club-record fee reported to be £4m, which Wrexham soon surpassed with a £5m swoop for Nottingham Forest's Lewis O'Brien.

They have also welcomed Leicester City's Conor Coady, bringing with him a formidable record of 485 senior matches, including nearly 200 Premier League appearances. 

But the addition of Ryan Hardie also looks a great bit of business. He scored 10 goals in the Championship last season for relegated Plymouth Argyle, though he has big shoes to fill given he has replaced club legend Paul Mullin, who has joined Wigan Athletic on loan. 

Blades to trump relegated trio?

While it is to be expected that the three relegated sides will find themselves among the favourites for an immediate return to the top flight, they come into a competitive Championship line-up off the back of poor individual campaigns. 

Southampton became the first team in Premier League history to lose 30 times in a season.

For Kieran McKenna and Ipswich, meanwhile, they picked up just 22 points, the lowest ever tally in a single league season in their history. 

In 2025, only Southampton (six) have picked up fewer points than the Tractor Boys (seven) among sides in the top four tiers of English football, while only Mansfield Town (51 goals conceded) have a worse defensive record than Ipswich (49). 

Leicester, now led by Marti Cifuentes, lost 25 league games last season (W6 D7), equalling their joint-most in a single campaign in their history (also 25 in 1994-95 and 1977-78).

All three of these sides struggled at the back, conceding 248 goals between them in the Premier League last season, with 86 of those coming from Southampton, who also had the highest expected goals against (xGA) of 87.16. 

Of the relegated sides, Ipswich are handed the best chance of an immediate return to the Premier League, with the supercomputer giving them an 8.1% chance of winning the title and a 15.2% chance of automatic promotion. 

Ipswich, whose ownership group includes pop star Ed Sheeran, should be helped by the recruitment they did last season, adding established Championship players such as Sammie Szmodics, Jacob Greaves and Jack Clarke to their ranks. 

In his last season in the Championship, Szmodics won the Golden Boot with 27 goals for a Blackburn Rovers team that finished 19th, while no player completed more dribbles than Clarke (148) in 2023-24 during his time with Sunderland. 

Leicester are yet to bring in any new faces ahead of the new campaign, and will need to replace the goals of Jamie Vardy, who called time on his Foxes career at the end of last season having scored 200 goals in 500 appearances across all competitions. 

The Foxes are handed a 16% chance of finishing in the top two, while they are assigned a 42.3% likelihood of finishing in the play-offs.

Southampton, under the guidance of Will Still, are given a 34.3% chance of making the top six. 

Perhaps surprisingly, the supercomputer has backed Sheffield United as the clear favourites to get over their Wembley woes and seal their return to the Premier League. 

Their defeat to Sunderland in the play-off final saw them fail to win any of their last eight matches under the Wembley arch, with their victory there coming 100 years ago against Cardiff City in the 1925 FA Cup final.

It was also the fifth consecutive defeat in a Football League play-off final for the Blades. No side has appeared in more without ever earning promotion. 

The Blades finished 10 points behind centurions Leicester and Leeds United last season, with only the Whites (95) and Norwich City (71) scoring more goals than the South Yorkshire club (70), while they also had the third-best defensive record in the division. 

Ruben Selles has replaced Chris Wilder at Bramall Lane, and his team are handed a 26.5% probability of winning the title and a 41.2% chance of going up automatically, while they finish in the top six in 71% of Opta's data-led season simulations. 

Grim scenes for the Hornets?

Charlton welcome Watford to The Valley in their first game back in the second tier in what looks to be a battle between two relegation candidates, at least according to the supercomputer's predictions. 

The Addicks finished inside the bottom three in 20.1% of the model's simulations, marginally lower than Watford's 21.7%.

Watford's predicted precarious predicament in 2025-26 may be down to Tom Cleverley's departure, with the former Manchester United midfielder sacked in May before taking the reins at relegated Plymouth Argyle. 

The Hornets now have Paulo Pezzolano in their dugout, but with the managerial merry-go-round at Vicarage Road, the 42-year-old may not even see the season out should he get off to a poor start in his maiden campaign in England. 

Along with Watford, the supercomputer predicts Oxford United to struggle, also assigning them a 21.7% chance of going down, while they are the favourites to finish bottom of the pile (8.1%).

They finished 17th last season, four points above the bottom three, but ended the campaign with a goal difference of -16, the fifth-lowest in the division behind Stoke City (-14), Luton Town (-24), Cardiff City (-25) and Plymouth (-37). 

Oxford also finished the season with the second-lowest team xG in the division with 41.7, only behind Plymouth (40.9), and they will need to improve that should they be able to retain their second-tier status. 

Preston North End, Derby County, Stoke City and Hull City are also expected to flounder in the lower reaches of the division.

Snoop Dogg aiming to inspire Swansea's Next Episode

While Wrexham and Birmingham's high-profile owners will garner much of the attention, Swansea City now have a star-studded line-up of co-owners looking to lead them back to the big time. 

Luka Modric was the first to become an investor in the Swans back in April. And the Real Madrid legend, who joined AC Milan after his departure from the Bernabeu, has since been joined by world-famous rapper Snoop Dogg. 

Snoop Dogg is known for his love of sports, and expressed his desire to invest in a football team following Wrexham's rise under Reynolds and McElhenney. He will now square up against the Hollywood duo.

Swansea were tipped for relegation under the tenure of former Notts County boss Luke Williams in February, but caretaker Alan Sheehan turned the tide and was eventually given the job on a full-time basis. 

Having averaged 1.12 points per game under Williams, Swansea earned 1.85 under Sheehan. Had the season started when he was appointed, they would have finished fourth, and his win rate of 54% was the fifth-best of all coaches to manage at least 10 games.

And according to the supercomputer, promotion is achievable for Swansea. They are handed a 6.4% chance of finishing in the top two, and a 2.8% chance of winning the title. They make the play-offs in 22.3% of the simulations.