Future stars and fluctuating fortunes: enjoy Championship’s weekend in sun

At a time when some of the Premier League’s biggest names are dotted across the world, with Arsenal and Newcastle opting for warm-weather training camps in the Middle East while other players, often towing obscenely big graphite suitcases, have escaped for exotic destinations such as the Bahamas and the Maldives, the English Football League rolls on. Bernardo Silva, binoculars at the ready, has been spotting elephants and leopards on a Jeep safari in Sri Lanka and the Brentford head coach, Thomas Frank, is using the break to zigzag down ski slopes in Switzerland but for the Championship it is full steam ahead, the division ready to savour its moment in the sun.

Just because there is no top-flight football this weekend does not mean there is nothing worth watching. Far from it, given that for the next generation the Championship represents a Premier League waiting room of sorts. For many, the secret is already out. Brentford have seen several bids rejected for the exciting Nottingham Forest winger Brennan Johnson and the Blackburn striker Ben Brereton Díaz’s rise has equally not gone unnoticed (he scored again for Chile on Thursday and remains on international duty). The Bristol City forward Antoine Semenyo, the Hull City centre-back Jacob Greaves, the Huddersfield pair Sorba Thomas and Lewis O’Brien and Forest’s on-loan Middlesbrough full-back Djed Spence, released by Fulham in 2018, are among those who appear capable of playing at a higher level. Luke Southwood and Nathan Baxter are goalkeepers grasping their first taste of the second tier at Reading and Hull respectively, the latter on loan from Chelsea.

Millions of fans do not need convincing, with combined attendances in the second tier totalling more than 4.5m in