Because professional football is no longer about cigarettes and hangovers, I can only assume that there’s a perfect scientific formula for the problems clubs like Leeds face. With the game increasingly relying on data-based decision making, one can only imagine that there is a perfect answer to this question: what is the perfect age spread for a team facing promotion from the Championship into the Premier League?

Momentum is powerful. Like Juggernaut in X-Men, once moving he’s impossible to stop. Once a football club gets moving (up or down) it’s not easy to stop them. Look at Ipswich, ending their previous campaign in League One having not lost since the third week of January, racking up fourteen wins in those nineteen games. They only lost four games all season. That kind of form is something you tend to carry with you, assuming you keep the group together which, inevitably, you tend to after promotion. In most cases the drag factor of a higher level of competition slows your progress and you settle into a more expected position, but the power of momentum cannot be downplayed. Ipswich have exceeded most expectations this season, even of their own fans, though they have finally started to succumb to the expected slowdown.

⬢

To read the rest of this article, you need to join TSB+ — members get access to this plus extra podcast and video episodes, all podcasts advert-free, can read every issue of our magazine online and much more. You can join or log in below.