Preston North End’s impressive 2023 points tally and how it compares vs Championship rivals - including Sunderland & Middlesbrough - gallery

The Championship 2023/24 season is approaching the 12-game stage, which make it the quarter-point of the campaign.

Preston North End are currently third, but over the last block of fixtures, both Ipswich Town and Leicester City have been on an exceptional run of form, and now occupy the top two.

Both teams inflicted defeats onto the Lilywhites before we paused for the latest round of EURO 2024 qualifiers, and there is 10 points and eight points separating Leicester, and Ipswich from Preston respectively.

Up until that 4-0 defeat to West Brom which caught everybody off guard, Preston had the perfect home record this season, and had won their opening four league matches each by a 2-1 scoreline. It’s up to the manager now to try and galvanise his team to get back to winning ways.

A slump in form was always going to happen given the nature of the second tier of English football, but there’s grand ambitions in Lancashire and you’d hope that the winning formula is found again soon. Gary Rowett’s Millwall are up next for PNE, and that’s a good place to start.

Flick through to see how all 30 teams who have played Championship football have done in the year 2023. Burnley, Sheffield United and Luton Town got promoted to the Premier League, and then we saw Sheffield Wednesday, Ipswich Town and Plymouth Argyle come up from League One. Blackpool, Wigan Athletic and Reading went down from the Championship meanwhile.

For the teams who remain in the second tier, it's around 32 or 33 games played whilst for those relegated or promoted, it's around 20.

It really does put into context how well Preston have done this year, given their 12th-placed finish last year, and how Ryan Lowe is building something at Deepdale.