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  1. Championship clubs spend more than £69m on agents fees

    Sindre Walle Egeli in an a blue Ipswich Town shirtGetty Images

    Ipswich signed Sindre Walle Egeli for a club record £17.5m in January

    Championship clubs spent just over £69.5m on agents fees over the past 12 months according to figures released by the Football Association, an increase of £6m on the previous year.

    The figures cover the period from February 2025 with Ipswich Town the top spenders, paying £11.7m having spent the first three months of the accounting period in the Premier League.

    Southampton (£8.3m) and Leicester (£5.8m), who were relegated alongside Ipswich are the second and third-highest payers on the list.

    Troubled Sheffield Wednesday were the most frugal when dealing with agents, spending £534,559.

    Wrexham come in sixth on the list with an outlay of £3.6m while current Championship leaders Coventry spent just short of £1.5m.

    Championship agents' fee spending

    • Ipswich - £11,738,920

    • Southampton - £8,381,358

    • Leicester City - £5,866,587

    • Sheffield United - £5,005,498

    • Norwich - £4,020,206

    • Wrexham - £3,660,584

    • Swansea - £3,088,645

    • Middlesbrough - £2,900,314

    • Bristol City - £2,774,990

    • Hull City - £2,450,431

    • Stoke City - £2,088,886

    • Birmingham City - £1,996,502

    • Millwall - £1,982,348

    • Preston North End - £1,831,233

    • QPR - £1,829,036

    • Watford - £1,612,833

    • Coventry - £1,497,990

    • Derby - £1,409,507

    • West Brom - £1,346,030

    • Oxford - £1,235,536

    • Charlton - £904,698

    • Portsmouth - £831,818

    • Blackburn - £676,980

    • Sheffield Wednesday - £534,559

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  2. A man in a yellow workers' jacket while holding a large pole stood outside a residential home on a sunny day.

  3. Becky Hobkirk has long blonde hair a white sweater and black jacket. Mum Nicky has shorter blonde hair and a black top. Both are smiling in front of BBC Radio Lancashire glass door.

  4. Exterior of Home Bargains on the Byrom Street retail estate in Blackburn.

  5. Close up picture of the back of a high vis police jacket as an officer stands next to a police car

  6. Pick of the stats: Leicester City v Preston North End

    The Leicester City and Preston North End club badges side by side

    Fresh from scoring for Ghana during the international break, Leicester will hope Abdul Fatawu and Jordan Ayew can transfer that form into goals for their club as they continue to battle to avoid a second successive relegation.

    Four defeats from their past five games means Preston's play-off challenge has dissolved and they start Good Friday's match (15:00 BST) 11 points short of the top six.

    • Leicester have won their past two home league games against Preston, having lost four in a row against them beforehand. They last won three consecutively between 1937 and 1950.

    • Following their 2-1 win in August, Preston are looking to complete the league double over Leicester for the first time since 1957-58.

    • Leicester have won just one of their past 13 league games (D5 L7), beating Bristol City 2-0 at home last month.

    • Following a 3-1 win against Stoke last time out, Preston are looking to win consecutive league games for the first time since January (vs Sheffield Wednesday and Bristol City).

    • Only Sheffield Wednesday (3) have kept fewer clean sheets than Leicester (5) in the Championship this season. However, two of the Foxes' five have come in their past three games.

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  7. Haseeb Hameed lifts the County Championship trophy at Trent Bridge

  8. Osmajic scores a double for losing side Montenegro

    A close-up of Milutin Osmajic playing for Montenegro in the side's white away kitGetty Images

    Preston North End forward Milutin Osmajic scored twice for Montenegro on Tuesday but could not help the side to a win during their 3-2 friendly loss to Slovenia.

    The 26-year-old opened the scoring in the 20th minute before Swansea's Zan Vipotnik equalised in the 41st minute.

    Omajic was able to peg back the lead before the half-time whistle but Slovenia scored twice - including another for the Championship's top-scorer Vipotnik - to take the win in the second half.

    The two goals bring Osmajic's senior international goal tally to seven, with the North End man scoring in each of his past three games for Montenegro.

  9. mugshot of Jeffrey Fisher

  10. Close up of the baby anteater snuggled in its mother's fur. It has a striped front leg, small ears and a long snout

  11. Official portrait of Adnan Hussain taken against a grey backdrop. He has black hair and a beard and is wearing glasses.

  12. David Moyes, who has white wavy hair, stands with his hand on the side of the engine under the plaque which says Preston North End in gold capitals in an arch over blue and white stripes. The engine is navy blue with the number 66303 in yellow under the plaque

  13. Volunteers holding broken and stained items

  14. Simon Sadler is wearing a dark jacket and shirt and is pictured inside a room with a hat stand in the background.

  15. Blackburn Rovers boss Michael O'Neill sits in the Oxford United dugout at the Kassam Stadium

  16. 'Championship will be a competitive league'

    Natalie Bromley
    Fan writer

    Burnley fan's voice banner
    Burnley players in a huddleGetty Images

    Thoughts that have been dominating my mind this week: my goodness, the Championship next season is going to be tough.

    Let's back up for a moment and recap on Burnley's success story in the Championship. Starting with their first promotion to the Premier League in 2009, the Clarets have spent 10 seasons out of 17 in the top flight, a statistic that is often overlooked. In their past four seasons in the second tier, they have finished first twice and second twice.

    Two of those seasons have ended with points totalling over 100.

    It is perhaps not unreasonable to assume that Scott Parker's side will simply run over the Championship again next season, before their biennial return to the Premier League.

    Except... will they?

    Assuming that Wolves and Burnley are to be relegated in the next couple of weeks, they will be joined by one of West Ham,Nottingham Forest,Leeds or, dare we imagine it, Spurs.Crystal Palace are probably safe now.

    Add to that roster Ipswich,Southampton,Wrexham,Millwall etc - only one of which can get through the last ever four-team play-off - and you have got yourself one heck of a competitive league.

    Burnley's board should be worried, especially as they risk going into that campaign with low morale and a fractured relationship between manager and fan base.

    While we expect that most, if not all, of the current squad will once again depart Turf Moor in the summer, one player I am keen to hold onto is Zian Flemming. With eight goals in 14 starts in his first ever season in the top flight, he can be proud of his step-up. We are most definitely going to need those goals next season.

    Find more from Natalie Bromley at No Nay Never podcast

  17. The four-storey Furness College campus building is a mixture of brown and white cube shapes. The front cube juts over the entrance. There are rows of rectangular windows. There are cars parked and benches in the courtyard on the right.

  18. Pace bowler Mitch Perry tosses a ball up in the air as he walks back to his mark.

  19. Brightly painted eggs at Easter in a cardboard carton.

  20. Edith Rigby shown in a black and white photo. Image payable per use, one use only, no cloning.

  21. Blackpool tower, a crowd gathers outside a church in Prescot and a singer plays a guitar in Bootle

  22. Inaayah Makda, wearing a brown furry jacket and a headscarf, smiles at the camera as she stands next to a water fountain in the shape of a star.

  23. Fans hold a bedsheet banner saying 'The Fans Expect The Best' in a football stadium.

  24. Visualisation of rock headlands along the beach. They are long stretches of grey rocks edging from the steps to the beach towards the sea. Blackpool's coastline can be seen in the background, with the tower to the left.
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