How important is possession in the championship? action

How important is possession in the Championship?

By Editor - Sep 17th 2026

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The Pep Guardiola effect remains in full force in English football, with teams up and down the land looking to play out from the back and control games by keeping hold of the ball.

Unlike the legendary Spanish manager’s Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Manchester City sides, however, many seem to struggle implementing this tactical approach, often failing to beat the opposition press and giving away soft goals.

Theoretically, the standard of football should worsen as you drop down the divisions, so we thought we’d take a look back at the 2025/26 Championship campaign in order to see just how important dominating possession actually proved to be.

THE POSSESSION KINGS (Percentage > 50)

Six teams enjoyed more than 50% of the ball in over 30 of their 46 second-tier matches, with every one of these sides finishing in the top half of the table. In fact, four of them actually ended the campaign between first and fifth.

On the face of it, that would suggest that enjoying more possession than your opponent is a good thing, but the picture becomes somewhat less rosy when you look at how the same teams fared in contests in which they had less than 50% of the ball:

Coventry City (1st)
Possession P W D L PTS PPG
> 50% 33 18 9 6 63 1.91
< 50% 13 10 2 1 32 2.46
Ipswich Town (2nd)
Possession P W D L PTS PPG
> 50% 34 14 12 8 54 1.59
< 50% 10 8 2 0 26 2.60
Southampton (4th)
Possession P W D L PTS PPG
> 50% 33 14 11 8 53 1.61
< 50% 12 8 2 2 26 2.17
Middlesbrough (5th)
Possession P W D L PTS PPG
> 50% 37 15 12 10 57 1.54
< 50% 9 7 2 0 23 2.56
Norwich City (9th)
Possession P W D L PTS PPG
> 50% 32 12 6 14 42 1.31
< 50% 14 7 2 5 23 1.64
Swansea City (11th)
Possession P W D L PTS PPG
> 50% 31 11 6 14 39 1.26
< 50% 12 6 3 3 21 1.75

As you can see, the points per game (ppg) figures rose dramatically for all six of these clubs in matches in which they didn’t dominate the ball, with Ipswich Town and Middlesbrough not even tasting defeat when this was the case.

It could be argued that, given the wildly differing number of games played by each team in the two possession categories, this is not a fair comparison, though there are certainly some useful football tips to be gleaned from this information.

THE ‘YOU HAVE THE BALL’ BRIGADE (Percentage < 50)

At the other end of the scale, there were five sides that had to contend with a less than 50% possession share in at least 30 of their 46 Championship games. Interestingly, this group included relegated Oxford United, as well as two of the top-six:

Millwall (3rd)
Possession P W D L PTS PPG
> 50% 14 5 4 5 19 1.36
< 50% 31 18 7 6 61 1.97
Hull City (6th)
Possession P W D L PTS PPG
> 50% 14 4 3 7 15 1.07
< 50% 30 16 7 7 55 1.83
Queens Park Rangers (15th)
Possession P W D L PTS PPG
> 50% 12 0 3 9 3 0.25
< 50% 33 16 6 11 54 1.64
Charlton Athletic (19th)
Possession P W D L PTS PPG
> 50% 8 3 2 3 11 1.38
< 50% 37 9 12 16 39 1.05
Oxford United (22nd)
Possession P W D L PTS PPG
> 50% 7 1 3 3 6 0.86
< 50% 39 10 11 18 41 1.05

Millwall averaged close to two points per game when ceding the majority of possession to their opponents, so, given that the Lions missed out on automatic promotion by just a single point, perhaps they should have given up the ball more often!

Not many Championship predictions had Hull City down for promotion to the Premier League at the end of the 2025/26 campaign, but the Tigers achieved that unlikely feat on the back of winning 16 of the 30 matches in which they had less of the ball.

Elsewhere, QPR were the living embodiment of the phrase ‘possession isn’t everything’, failing to win any of the 12 games in which their share was over 50%, but averaging 1.64 points per game when it was less than 50%.

THE GENERAL TREND

Of the 11 clubs that we have already covered, Charlton Athletic are the only ones to have averaged more points per game when enjoying over 50% possession than they have when restricted to less than 50% possession.

Somewhat remarkably, this remains the case when we take into consideration the other 13 Championship sides, meaning that 23 of the 24 participants in the 2025/26 season fared better when they had less of the ball than their opponents:

Wrexham (7th)
Possession P W D L PTS PPG
> 50% 19 6 5 8 23 1.21
< 50% 26 13 8 5 47 1.81
Derby County (8th)
Possession P W D L PTS PPG
> 50% 16 4 5 7 17 1.06
< 50% 28 16 4 8 52 1.86
Birmingham City (10th)
Possession P W D L PTS PPG
> 50% 28 7 9 12 30 1.07
< 50% 15 8 3 4 27 1.80
Bristol City (12th)
Possession P W D L PTS PPG
> 50% 23 5 5 13 20 0.87
< 50% 19 10 5 4 35 1.84
Sheffield United (13th)
Possession P W D L PTS PPG
> 50% 23 7 2 14 23 1.00
< 50% 23 11 4 8 37 1.61
Preston North End (14th)
Possession P W D L PTS PPG
> 50% 17 3 4 10 13 0.76
< 50% 28 12 11 5 47 1.68
Watford (16th)
Possession P W D L PTS PPG
> 50% 24 4 8 12 20 0.83
< 50% 22 10 7 5 37 1.68
Stoke City (17th)
Possession P W D L PTS PPG
> 50% 26 7 6 13 27 1.04
< 50% 20 8 4 8 28 1.40
Portsmouth (18th)
Possession P W D L PTS PPG
> 50% 23 7 5 11 26 1.13
< 50% 19 6 8 5 26 1.37
Blackburn Rovers (20th)
Possession P W D L PTS PPG
> 50% 18 3 4 11 13 0.72
< 50% 25 8 9 8 33 1.32
West Bromwich Albion (21st)
Possession P W D L PTS PPG
> 50% 22 4 6 12 18 0.82
< 50% 22 9 8 5 35 1.59
Leicester City (23rd)
Possession P W D L PTS PPG
> 50% 25 3 10 12 19 0.76
< 50% 20 8 6 6 30 1.50
Sheffield Wednesday (24th)
Possession P W D L PTS PPG
> 50% 16 0 2 14 2 0.13
< 50% 28 2 9 17 15 0.54

This is a truly staggering statistic and surely makes a mockery of the many managerial appointments at this level that seem to be driven by a desire to introduce a possession-based approach.

Of course, the counterargument would be that the likes of Vincent Kompany at Burnley and Enzo Maresca at Leicester City have shown in recent years that keeping the ball can pay dividends in the second tier, though both of those sides struggled mightily following promotion.

If you are in the market for Premier League predictions that can help you to beat the bookies, then backing Hull to survive seems like a sensible choice. Unlike Coventry and Ipswich, the Tigers are accustomed to operating without the ball, so stepping up a level should not be such a culture shock.