History of the Championship
The Football League Championship is the second division football league in England after the Barclays Premier League. The League was originally formed in 1888. The League comprised of 12 teams in the beginning, and it was known as the Football League. In 1992, 22 clubs resigned from the Football League First Division and together set up the FA Premier League. The incident caused a major shuffle in the structure of professional leagues in England, but the Football League has remained the most powerful league after the Premier League. In 2005, the Football League went through a change of name again; it was called the Football League Championship or The Championship in short.
The soccer championship in its current form comprises of 24 teams and each team play the other teams twice across the season in a home and away match. For a win, the teams get three points and in case of a draw, they score one. If there is a tie in points, then the goal difference is the tie-breaker. At the end of the season, the top two teams from the Championship get promoted to the Premier League. There is a play-off between teams ranking from 3 to 6 to decide the 3rd and final team to be promoted. The bottom three teams from the Championship get relegated to the Football League One. The three teams that finish at the bottom in the Premier League join the other teams in the Championship. The top three soccer teams from Football League One get promoted to the Championship.
Previous Championship season(s)
The 2008-09 Championship season turned out be very exciting as the teams played some exquisite soccer to enthral their fans. Wolverhampton Wanderers and Birmingham City finished as the top two teams and made the cut to join the Barclays Premier League. For the third and final spot, Burnley and Sheffield United locked horns at Wembley in the playoffs final, and Burnley edged past their rivals 1-0 to win the third spot. Norwich City, Southampton and Charlton Athletic got relegated to play in the Football League One. West Bromwich Albion, Middlesbrough and Newcastle United were relegated the Football Championship after the 2008–09 English football season. And you can definitely bet that these teams will try to get their act together and beat the odds to get back to the Premier League.
