The Championship promotion race: English football's most brutal league

Why it is different

Ask any player who has experienced it and the answer is the same: there is no league in Europe quite like the Championship. Forty-six matches, three promotion places and a play-off system that punishes a season's slip in a single afternoon.

The race this season has been defined by its unpredictability — a pack of eight clubs separated by a handful of points, each convinced they belong in the automatic places.

The financial stakes make the madness rational: promotion is worth more than a hundred million pounds, and the contrast between the play-off final's elation and the losers' despair is the cruelest in football.

• Eight clubs separated by single figures with ten rounds to go
• The play-off final remains the most valuable match in world football
• A midweek schedule that makes squad depth decisive

Nobody remembers the team that finished fourth. Everybody remembers the team that went up.