Championship outright betting tips: Who will win automatic promotion in 2024/25?

This Championship season has a lot to live up to. The 2023/24 campaign will go down in history as the most competitive promotion chase of all time, with a couple of our tips in Leicester and Ipswich Town coming good.

This year’s league would appear to offer less quality, with no dark horse among the sides promoted from League One, and question marks over the relegated sides.

Leeds United are priced as the likeliest winner of the division, with Burnley, Luton Town and Middlesbrough fancied as their closest challengers.

Still, that could pave the way for an equally thrilling race, with outsiders like Coventry City, West Brom and Norwich City joining the race for automatic promotion.

 

Suggested bets

Leeds United to be promoted

Burnley to be promoted

 

Leeds United

We’ll start with the bookmaker’s favourite and last year's play-off final losers, Leeds United. The Whites made a positive start to pre-season with the permanent signings of Jayden Bogle and Joe Rodon.

Daniel Farke is considering a more tactically flexible approach this campaign, trotting out 3-4-3 during pre-season and a high-pressing variation of 4-4-2 with attacking full-backs.

Fans love signings, but keeping existing talent is more of a statement of intent in the Championship, and retaining flair players like Georginio Rutter was crucial.

In addition, the returning Brendan Aaronson, a quick-footed midfielder who can operate in the 10 role where Farke has no options, coupled with Max Wober, who has a wealth of international experience and allows for a back three, are potentially Premier League players.

It’s unlikely four sides will reach 87 points and beyond again, but even if they do, Leeds can be one of them by making a better start to the season.

The Yorkshire club were 11 points off the pace after nine matches and finished the season nine points behind title winners Leicester. The emphasis will be on as close to a perfect start as possible.

 

Burnley

When a team is relegated from the Premier League to the Championship, the expectation is they’ll be one of the stronger teams in the division. But there are two sides to that coin.

Teams like Cardiff City, Huddersfield Town, Stoke City, Swansea City, Watford, and West Brom, have yet to bounce back.

We expect the Clarets to make a strong push for automatic promotion because the circumstances of their relegation aren’t particularly damning.

Relegation brings with it certain financial pressures, but Burnley have built sustainably, focusing on a playing identity under Vincent Kompany as opposed to splashing out on big transfer fees.

Kompany may be gone, but that core of players young, energetic and technically gifted players is still there, and Scott Parker will likely find a way to get the best out of them.

Being able to hold on to so many talented players will be key to their success. The drop in the level of opposition will surely allow them to flourish, and we expect to see a very front-foot, attacking side that entertains and scores plenty of goals.

 

Luton Town

Luton Town will be the first to admit they are a moderate club. Compared to the Premier League, and even a lot of the clubs in the Championship, they aren’t a big brand name with the resources to compete year after year.

From the outside, there’s no weight of expectation and they aren’t anyone’s cup final, even if their meetings with Watford could be tasty. Inwardly, they’ll fancy themselves to win the league.

Keeping Rob Edwards at the club is crucial because it was his style and leadership that helped the Hatters to the Premier League in the first place.

Much of the squad that gained promotion is still there and there’s no reason the approach that saw them escape the second tier won’t work again.

They’ve added some quality in key areas, but due to their limited finances, they don’t look likely to lose any more of the signings that improved them, such as Tahith Chong.

Players like Mads Anderson, Josh Brownhill, Reece Burke, and Jordan Clarke are just a handful of Town players with bags of experience at this level, whilst Carlton Morris and Elijah Adebayo, who have scored 20 and 16 goals respectively at this level, return much better players.

 

Middlesbrough

The aforementioned sides come under consideration, but there are still question marks over Sheffield United, which opens the door for someone from the play-off chasing pack to make their mark this season.

Michael Carrick’s Middlesbrough finished just shy of 70 points last season, a number which could be around 15 to 18 points shy of the team that finishes second in 2024/25.

They showed their potential with unbeaten runs of seven and nine matches, causing Leeds, Leicester and Southampton some serious problems when they met.

Their style of play under Carrick allowed them to pick up more points and score more goals on their travels than the majority of teams in the league.

In some ways, that’s a great starting point, because it shouldn’t be too hard to transform the Riverside into a fortress if the team is playing well and picking up wins early in the season.

A full season of a fully fit Emmanuel Latte Lath should also yield more goals and points, whilst the addition of Aidan Morris is being overlooked.

The quality of his ball retention and progressive passing in MLS makes him, in our opinion, a future Premier League player.

 

Sheffield United

We’ve already been slightly pessimistic about Sheffield United’s chances of being a major player in the automatic promotion race. We don’t currently see them as a top-two side, but that can change.

The Saints underwent a major overhaul at this stage last season, losing players left and right. They managed to reinvent the wheel and secure promotion through the play-offs.

The positives are the additions of Callum O’Hare, Kieffer Moore and Sam McCallum, who are proven performers at this level. Even Jamie Shackleton has his uses as a utility player.

So far, they’ve lost 14 players who featured in their Premier League squad. That level of churn is always going to pose a challenge, so we need to see how they line up on the opening day of the season, and how that team fares.

The club decided to move on from Chris Wilder in the recent past but re-appointed him last season. That decision was made to inject some of the identity and the passion of the club in a bid to stave off relegation.

We need to see how Wilder’s ideas marry together with this group of players at this level. On the other hand, it’s hard to ignore that Vini Souza and Gustavo Hamer don’t belong at this level, so there’s still potential.

 

READ MORE: Championship betting tips: Who will win the Golden Boot?