Next Season

But when you think of what he inherited, what he had to work with, what he had to spend, and what’s happened since, you cannot conclude that he’s been anything other than a success in his first year in the job. Steve McClaren’s QPR, even when winning, were frequently dire to watch, particularly away from home. Now we’ve scored more goals than all but the top three, and won more games away than we have for six years. I no longer get on the train on Saturday morning to head north assuming we’ve lost before we even get there. Ebere Eze has gone from being a player people weren’t sure about to the hottest property in the Championship. Ryan Manning and Bright Osayi-Samuel aren’t far behind him and couldn’t even get in our team last season. Worth remembering that Steve McClaren was brought here for his fabled coaching abilities, to work with the young players Ian Holloway had started to introduce the previous year, and he exhausted Eze, could find no place for Bright, and sent Ilias Chair and Ryan Manning out on loan. All four have thrived and prospered under Warburton, though sadly that wasted year is now costing us in Manning’s and Osayi-Samuel’s contract situations. Conor Masterson, Osman Kakay and Mide Shodipo have all also been fed into the team in the second half of the season.

Aston Villa chief executive Christian Purslow thinks more should be done to close the financial gap between the Premier League and EFL, a situation made even more extreme by the coronavrius pandemic. "I think the COVID-19 crisis has shone a light on the very significant differences that exists between the pinnacle of English football, the Premier League. And what goes on further down the pyramid," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

"These financial issues were there before the COVID-19 crisis. Nobody would have designed a system where the team finishing at the bottom of the Premier League would be earning in the hundreds of millions for television money, and the team finishing at the top of the league below would be earning less than five. That is such an enormous gap, surely there's a better way. And I think that cliff edge that has really made life very difficult between those two divisions, I think will be addressed strategically in the coming weeks and months.

"I think there just needs to be a much higher level of coordination between the management of the two leagues. The EFL, as a whole, is not properly valued by the global media industry and that's the issue that needs to be addressed. "It's about growing the revenues in Championship football, and League One and League Two football, and I think the Premier League could be very helpful in that regard."