The Championship rarely does quiet seasons, and the numbers say 2026/27 won't be one either. The Statz model has simulated the season 10,000 times — every fixture, every team, over and over — to produce a projected table, and it tells three big stories: a heavyweight favourite carrying Premier League parachutes and a 100-goal attack, a promotion scramble packed into a handful of points, and a relegation battle projected tighter than any in the league's recent memory.
Everything below comes from the Statz Championship outrights model, updated 4 August. The live version — with title, top-two, top-eight and relegation probabilities for all 24 clubs — updates continuously through the season.
| Pos | Team | GF | GA | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | West Ham | 101.0 | 53.3 | +47.7 | 92.3 |
| 2 | Wolves | 74.2 | 44.4 | +29.8 | 83.6 |
| 3 | Southampton | 82.5 | 60.8 | +21.7 | 77.4 |
| 4 | Middlesbrough | 76.9 | 56.7 | +20.2 | 76.7 |
| 5 | Burnley | 73.1 | 58.3 | +14.8 | 73.2 |
| 6 | Sheffield United | 79.8 | 69.5 | +10.3 | 70.2 |
| 7 | Norwich | 67.3 | 58.4 | +8.8 | 69.2 |
| 8 | Millwall | 66.0 | 61.9 | +4.1 | 66.1 |
| … | |||||
| 22 | Lincoln | 56.8 | 77.5 | -20.8 | 50.4 |
| 23 | Charlton | 52.3 | 72.9 | -20.6 | 49.9 |
| 24 | Bolton | 60.0 | 83.4 | -23.4 | 49.6 |
The full 24-team table, with probabilities for every market, lives on the outrights page.
The model's headline call is emphatic: West Ham are projected champions with 92.3 points and 101 goals, and the latest model run makes them title winners in roughly 70% of simulations. No other club wins it even one time in ten. That projection lands despite a bruising summer — a reported £85m sale of Mateus Fernandes to Tottenham, Crysencio Summerville's reported £55m move to Al-Hilal, and nine players released — because the squad that remains, with Mads Hermansen, Max Kilman and Kyle Walker-Peters reported as staying, is still priced as comfortably the division's strongest.
Wolves occupy the second automatic spot at 83.6 points, and they get there a very different way: the meanest projected defence in the league at 44.4 goals against. The 8.7-point gap from Wolves down to third is the largest between any two neighbouring positions in the projection — the model sees automatic promotion as a two-horse race.
Below the top two, the projection compresses violently. Southampton — into their second Championship season and projected top scorers outside the top two at 82.5 goals — sit third on 77.4 points, with Middlesbrough at 76.7: a gap of 0.7 points across 10,000 simulations. Burnley, the third relegated side, land fifth on 73.2, and Sheffield United take the last playoff place on 70.2 — with the division's most entertaining projection: 79.8 scored, 69.5 conceded.
The unlucky pair are Norwich (69.2, exactly one point outside the playoffs) and Millwall (66.1) — close enough that a good August rewrites the picture. Burnley's projection rests on the least settled squad: their standout wide man Jaidon Anthony and £20m-rated defender Maxime Estève have been widely reported as sale candidates before the window closes on 1 September.
The bottom of the projection is extraordinary. The three promoted clubs fill the three relegation places — Lincoln (50.4), Charlton (49.9) and Bolton (49.6) — separated by 0.8 points, with Cardiff (51.4) and Preston (52.8) hovering barely above the line. Five clubs inside three projected points of the drop is as tight as this model gets.
The stories write themselves: Lincoln are back in the second tier for the first time in 65 years, Cardiff bounced straight back up from League One, and Bolton return after seven years away — carrying the division's leakiest projected defence at 83.4 goals against, but also 60 projected goals, more than anyone else in the bottom seven. Charlton, the one non-promoted club in the projected drop zone, may consider that the least welcome compliment in football.
A projection made in August is a starting grid, not a verdict — every result reshapes the simulations, and the model re-runs continuously through the season. The Championship outrights page carries the live probabilities for every market — title, top two, top eight, relegation and bottom finish — alongside best bookmaker odds and where the model disagrees with the market. For the week-to-week picture, the Championship hub tracks form, standings and stats as the real table takes shape.
Who is predicted to win the Championship in 2026/27? West Ham — projected champions on 92.3 points with 101 goals, winning the title in roughly 70% of the model's 10,000 season simulations.
Who is predicted to be relegated from the Championship in 2026/27? The model's projected bottom three are Lincoln, Charlton and Bolton — separated by less than a point, with Cardiff and Preston only just above them.
How are the Statz Championship predictions made? The model simulates the full season 10,000 times using team strength ratings, then aggregates the outcomes into a projected table and probabilities for every outright market. It re-runs continuously as results come in.