The Road Ahead
A week from the fixtures drop, a look at the new grounds, the old rivals and the division waiting for us
We are just a week away from the best day of the football summer, the morning the 2026/27 fixture list lands and we finally learn who Sheffield Wednesday will face on the opening day. The EFL releases the schedule on 25 June, and from that moment the new season stops being an idea and starts to feel real. Wall charts go up, away days get plotted, and every supporter in the land spends ten happy minutes working out when the big games fall.
New grounds, old romance
There is a new ground to tick off this time around. Bromley is a club I wrote about not long ago in The 1867 Post Archives. They have been one of the great success stories of the modern game, climbing the ladder rung by rung and into the professional ranks, and now they will host us at Hayes Lane. A ground with a capacity of just over six thousand is not where many expected to see Wednesday turn up, but that is the beauty of this division, and it is exactly the sort of fixture that makes the third tier so endlessly watchable.
It is not the only away day to relish either. Notts County are back among us after eleven years away, and a trip to Meadow Lane is one of the proper ones, the oldest professional football club in the world housed in an old-fashioned ground right on the banks of the Trent. Mark that one down now, because it is a weekend away worth booking the moment the fixtures drop.
What the bookies are saying
The bookies have Bromley at 150/1 to win the league (Paddy Power, before anyone asks), which tells you how steep the climb still is for the newcomers. When the betting markets open, people get excited, and I will admit I was surprised to see Wednesday installed as 7/1 second favourites, sitting just behind Leicester City at 5/2.
The Foxes were lifting the Premier League trophy a decade ago and now find themselves in our division, with Russell Martin, fresh from taking Southampton up to the top flight, charged with hauling them straight back out of it. They will fancy their chances, and so will plenty of others.
David Bruce and his team are working hard behind the scenes to wheel and deal, and the shape of the squad come August will tell us far more than any odds compiled in June. So I am not paying much attention to the markets. They are a distraction from what promises to be a thoroughly exciting season, and the league has never been won on a betting slip.
A division full of stories
And what a division it is shaping up to be. Luton Town were rubbing shoulders with the Premier League elite as recently as two seasons ago and now arrive with Jack Wilshere in the dugout. Reading, Huddersfield, Bradford City, Wigan, Plymouth under Tom Cleverley and the Oxford side that came down alongside us all bring their own history and their own travelling support. Almost every away day this season carries a bit of weight.
The best of it, though, is the human stuff. Mansfield Town have just landed the kind of signing that makes this level sing, with David McGoldrick putting pen to paper on a one-year deal at Field Mill after turning down the chance to stay on with Barnsley.
There is a lovely defiance to that, a forward in the autumn of his career, a man who had a brief spell at Wednesday and across the city. McGoldrick is choosing the project that excites him over the comfortable option down the road. Nigel Clough has landed himself a quiet coup, the sort that never troubles the back pages but wins you a dressing room.
Bring on the season
The league cannot be won in August, but the right signings can turn a tidy squad into a promotion-chasing one, and they will be doing it in front of more than 22,000 season ticket holders. Hillsborough and its large capacity will be the grandest stage most of these clubs set foot on all year, and there is very little in this league that can match a full house on Penistone Road for size and noise. We may have dropped a division, but we will not be short of backing.
So I am not losing any sleep over a betting market in June. Let the fixtures land next Thursday, let David Bruce do his work, and let us see who is still smiling come May.
UTO 🦉
