The Football League Championship on Football Knowledge Website

The 2014 - 2015 Football season kicked off in England with Blackburn Rovers entertaining Cardiff City on Friday 8th August 2014. The score was a 1 - 1 draw with most of the possession going to Blackburn Rovers (65% according to BBC Sport). The first game of the season is always a cagey affair, so it's no surprise when most football matches in the first week of August end up as a draw or a narrow 1 - 0 win.

Nathan Thompson
Swindon Town Player of the Year 2013 & 2014

In League 1, Swindon Town take on Scunthorpe United at the County Ground and Robins fans can only hope for a season similar to the one just gone. Mark Cooper and Lee Power seem to have the know-how to get the best out of younger players and it's heartening to see Nathan Thompson, a product of the club's youth academy and still only 23, being given the Captain's armband for the coming season. With missing out on the play-offs in May a disappointment when, at the start of the 2013 - 2014 season, relegation fears were uppermost in most Swindon Town fans' minds, the story unfolding at the County Ground this coming football year will be equally as interesting as the one told between August 2013 and May 2014.

One thing that has kept my football interest going since the end of last season, the FIFA World Cup notwithstanding, is the ongoing development of my  Football Knowledge website. All the teams for The Premier League and The Football League Championship for this season now have an entry and their histories, notable players and other facts are now just one click of a button away. The idea has always been to give football fans a brief overview of, not only their own team, but the other clubs in the world of football - it is an ongoing project with the whole of the football world to map!

Fulham's Bedford Jezzard

Sheffield Wednesday's Redfern Froggatt

The Football League Championship, for me, is going to be a more fascinating league than the Premier League this season. It is such an eclectic mix of teams whose rich histories and past glories will see ex-European Champions rubbing shoulders with teams who last saw top drawer action in their formative years when the Football League was in its infancy. The names of players such as Fulham's Bedford Jezzard (3rd Top Goalscorer) and Sheffield Wednesday's Fedfern Froggatt (3rd Top Goalscorer) evoke images of Hobbits in Tolkein's Middle earth rather than the rain and mud of a mid-week football match in the depths of  an English winter.

One of the most notable of all the Football League's former players must be Steve Bloomer of Derby County (and Middlesbrough) fame. An England international, he was interned at the Ruhleben civilian detention camp at the onset of the First World War having gone to Germany to coach Britannia Berlin 92. His story is a fascinating one and is probably deserving of more than the traditional song, Steve Bloomer's Watching, played at Derby County. I would encourage all true football fans to research his story.

The next phase in the development of the Football Knowledge website will be League 1 - the chance to discover further stories of the teams that make up the Football League makes the journey a joy rather than a slog.