The 2025-26 Championship season kicked off on Friday evening as Wolverhampton Wanderers hosted Blackburn Rovers at Molineux, with both clubs turning to fresh managerial leadership in hopes of setting a positive tone for the campaign ahead.
Wolves enter the second tier following a surprise summer decision to part ways with Rob Edwards, handing first-team duties to César Peixoto for his inaugural league fixture in charge. Despite the drop from the Premier League, Wolves have retained much of their squad depth and made shrewd additions in the transfer market, positioning them among the favourites for an immediate return to the top flight.
Across the touchline, Tony Mowbray returned to the Blackburn Rovers dugout, tasked with steering the club away from the relegation concerns that many pundits have already attached to their season. Rovers' preparation looked notably different from their hosts', with their entire starting eleven for the opener featuring no summer signings whatsoever. New arrivals Sam Morsy and Jayden Fevrier were only named among the substitutes, while another addition, Moussa Baradji, was unavailable through injury.
Wolves also had selection headaches of their own heading into the match, missing several key figures. Hwang Hee-Chan, Sasa Kalajdzic, Santiago Bueno and Ladislav Krejci were all absent for a variety of reasons, underlining the squad depth that even a weakened Wolves side can call upon at Championship level.
Questions lingered over Peixoto's preferred setup, with some outlets suggesting a shift from an earlier-mooted 3-4-2-1 to a 4-2-3-1 formation, which would see Rodrigo Gomes deployed as an out-and-out winger rather than a wing-back.
The teams lined up as follows. Wolves: Bentley; Trippier, Mosquera, T. Gomes; R. Gomes, André, Munetsi, Möller Wolfe; Lopez, Mané; Armstrong, with a bench including Sá, Bueno, Jiménez, Lima, Doyle, Chirewa, Djiga, Tchatchoua and Edozie. Blackburn fielded: Toth; Alebiosu, Atcheson, McLoughlin, Pickering; Forshaw, Montgomery; Afolayan, Cantwell, Morishita; Gudjohnsen, with Pears, Ribeiro, Tavares, Morsy, Fevrier, Carter, Henriksson, Ohashi and Garrett among the substitutes.
One of the storylines heading into the fixture centred on Kieran Trippier, who dropped down to the Championship this summer to join Wolves after a lengthy and decorated career at the highest level of English and European football. Speaking about his decision, Trippier addressed any notion that the move represented a step down. "I'm not ashamed to go to the Championship because I played in it for many years," he said. "I had a good chat with Eddie Howe and made my decision at the end of the season that I wanted to try something new. There were a few [interested] clubs but it was important for me that I was close to my children."
Mowbray, for his part, has become something of an unlikely social media talking point in recent days after a video of him discussing his fondness for Revels chocolates circulated widely, offering a lighter moment amid the serious business of preparing his side for a challenging campaign.
With Wolves widely tipped to challenge for promotion and Blackburn aiming simply to steady the ship under a familiar face in the dugout, the opening fixture of the season offered both clubs a chance to make an early statement of intent, even if, as is often the case on the first night of a long campaign, the picture painted by a single result can be misleading.
Based on reporting from Guardian Football.