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The Premier League's generosity in giving larger hand-outs to its relegated clubs may not quite be all it seems. Mike Holden explains

Three years ago, three American economists emulated the non-fiction phenomenon Freakonomics with a book documenting their mathematical studies into sports data. Among other things, The Wages of Wins looked at the “competitive balance” of leagues across a variety of sports using a formula known as the Noll-Scully measurement, leading them to conclude that basketball will always have a competitive balance problem due to the relative lack of tall people.

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Charlton have gone from being a well-run Premier League club to an institution defined by calamitous mismanagement on and off the pitch. Mick Collins examines a cautionary tale

After two relegations in three years, Charlton fans have become used to looking for silver linings, however hard they’ve been to locate. Of very limited consolation, though, has been the ease with which we can now start a footballing conversation. No matter how remote the setting, a mention of your allegiance to anyone with even the vaguest of interest in the game, brings a guaranteed response: “What’s gone wrong at The Valley, then?”

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Huw Richards sums up the Championship season whilst asking of whether being at the top of the division correlates with playing better football

Do you want your team to play in the Premier League? Well, yes, me too. But this year’s Championship season shows that achieving what we’re told is the Holy Grail – or at least the answer to a £60 million question – can have unwanted side-effects. When your team is newly risen from the lower orders you have certain expectations. Better grounds, bigger crowds and classier football. No doubt about the first two, but hope of number three went largely ungratified.

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Since they last met at Vicarage Road over a quarter of a century ago Swansea and Watford's paths have diverged. However, as they meet again in the second tier it is the visitors who are building an enviable reputation while the hosts look to be suffering a case of post-play-off syndrome. Huw Richards was there

Watford and Swansea are forever linked by the shared experience of the late 1970s and early 1980s when both rose in a few seasons from the fourth level to the upper reaches of what we then called (and still is, whatever its official label may be) Division One. There, though, their paths diverged. Watford stayed on at the upper end of the league and have spent only two of the past 30 seasons outside the top two divisions. Swansea, by contrast, returned whence they had come and have only this year escaped the bottom two.

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There seems little sign of any good news for the clubs struggling financially, writes Tom Davies

When Bristol Rovers announced ambitious plans to redevelop the Memorial Ground in conjunction with a student flat development, it was hailed in many quarters as a model for similar sized clubs, but the £35 million project has hit the skids after the property company due to fund most of it pulled out.

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