3 Sky Sports pundits all make same EFL Championship title winner prediction | OneFootball

West Ham United are the heavy Championship title favourites for this season

With the Championship season getting underway on Friday afternoon, the Sky Sports punditry trio of Curtis Davies, Jobi McAnuff and Luke Chambers have all selected the same title winners in their pre-season predictions.

All three have vast experience of featuring in the second tier, with McAnuff captaining Reading to the title in the 2011/12 season, whilst Davies has also earned promotion with West Bromwich Albion and Hull City, and they have pinpointed West Ham United as the title favourites.

The promotion picture in the Championship is expected to be one of the most compelling we have seen since the division's rebrand in 2004, especially through a well-documented change involving the play-offs, with the sides who finish seventh and eighth also involved in the post-season lottery.

However, for a handful of clubs, they will certainly not be content with just featuring in the top eight, and even ahead of the new season, are likely to have made it their aim to achieve automatic promotion at the bare minimum, whilst a shot at silverware is also up for grabs.

Whoever wins the Championship title this time around will be following in the footsteps of Coventry City, who won the league with 95 points to their name in 2025/26, finishing 11 points clear of second-placed Ipswich Town.

Sky Sports trio heavily fancy West Ham for EFL Championship title win

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In a short social media video prior to the league season getting underway, Chambers, Davies and McAnuff have all given various team and player-related predictions for the upcoming 46-game season.

However, like most onlookers of the Championship, the trio had next-to-no hesitation when it came to viewing the Hammers as title-winning material under Nuno Espírito Santo, who won the division with Wolves eight years ago.

Even after losing Crysencio Summerville and Mateus Fernandes for a combined fee of approximately £140m, the East London side were able to retain the services of club captain and London Stadium cult hero, Jarrod Bowen, despite interest from Premier League clubs.

That said, whilst a strong core of players has been retained thus far, only three signings have been completed in the form of Joel Veltman, Keiber Lamadrid and Manor Solomon, with the latter a part of Leeds United's title-winning side of 2024/25.

Curtis Davies backs ex-Hull City teammate to be the EFL Championship's difference maker

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Although Chambers and McAnuff believe that Middlesbrough's midfield maestro, Aidan Morris, and the returning Raul Jimenez at Wolves will pick up the Championship's Player of the Season award, Davies believes his former Hull teammate, the aforementioned Bowen, will come up trumps in the running for the individual accolade.

A two-and-a-half year spell in the Championship with the Tigers between 2017 and January 2020 was the catalyst for the Leominster-born forward to achieve success in London on an individual and collective scale.

And, it is fair to say that, just three years after scoring the winner in the UEFA Conference League final, it is still a mystery to many as to how the 22-time England international is still at the club, irrespective of his well-known family ties.

West Ham will have to cope with major pressure in order to win EFL Championship

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Given the club's predicament as heavy title favourites, West Ham will be well aware that the vast majority of opponents will raise their game, particularly when visiting the London Stadium.

Despite falling behind, the Irons got off to an eventual positive start by defeating Portsmouth 3-1 in the EFL Cup first round last weekend, and have a rather intriguing first game of the league season against fellow newly-relegated Burnley at Turf Moor on Sunday.

We will, perhaps, get an early indication as to whether Nuno's men can live up to such expectations due to further early-season fixtures against the likes of Wolves, Derby CountyWrexham and Millwall