The hardest league in the world? That's easy... it's the Championship!

The Football League Championship is one of the toughest football leagues in the world.
Not in terms of players technical abilities or the flowing football that's on offer there, but instead in terms of the level of difficulty that teams have to come out on top in those two lucrative automatic promotion positions at the end of the season.

Ask the league's longest serving residents, Ipswich Town, who've spent every season in the Championship since their relegation from the Premier League in 2002.
Or ask Fulham F.C., now struggling in the Championship, but as recent as 2011 were in the Europa League group stage before being relegated from the top flight two seasons later.
You could even ask Blackburn Rovers fans, or Wolves fans, and even Queens Park Rangers... Okay you get the point.

But once a team does come down from the top flight of English football, they find it extremely difficult to return if they don't achieve it in the first four seasons, and even more difficult when the parachute payment's run out.
"Parachute Payments" are the money received each season by newly relegated teams once they begin plying their trade back in the Championship. Over their first four seasons back in the league, the club receives 12 million pounds (17.6 million dollars) a year, to help compensate for the reduced income from not being part of the Premier League and to help pay the wages of players on the so called 'Premier League wages'.
But once that source of income runs out, teams begin to struggle and ultimately begin to sell their better players to reduce wage bills and offer a short term source of income to help with the clubs day to day costs.

Teams who find themselves at this point, short of money and short of quality players, usually progress through a restructure phase which takes year after year of mediocrity to achieve.
But in the cut-throat business of football, in which everyone wants instant success, it is a very difficult idea to achieve and implement and those who strive for instant success usually find themselves dropping down another league through relegation or even administration.

Leeds fans in 2004 as their club faced administration

Some clubs even find themselves "Doing a Leeds", (yes, apparently that's a real term), in which the management of a club continue to strive for instant success irregardless of financial implications which results in a financial meltdown, before the club falls into administration in which they are run exclusively by accountants until debts have been re-payed. 

Another reason the Championship is such a tough league to progress from is the generic standard of football that's on offer. That's not to say it's a poor standard by any means, just that most teams play to around the same level, with the same amount of ability in their match day squad. There are a few players who are exceptions to this, but once the transfer window in January rolls around, they are usually picked off by the teams in the lower end of the Premier League looking for in-form, cheaper players to boost their survival chances.

With teams usually playing to around the same standard of football, it's extremely common to see tight scrappy games and even results you wouldn't expect to see on paper.
Putting club history aside, in recent seasons you wouldn't expect to see Sheffield Wednesday beat Fulham, or Preston to beat Hull, or even MK Dons to beat Cardiff. But in recent weeks those are the results at 4:45 p.m. on Saturday afternoons.
While it's safe to say those that have recently come down from the Premier League should be the ones challenging for the promotion places, every team they play still has a very realistic chance of getting a result due to the different playing style that the Championship offers.

It could even be said that even those teams that continuously flirt with the promotion and playoff positions in the league are better off not getting promoted. While the idea of promotion to a better league with more money, TV rights and usually the attraction of better players seems like the holy grail. Attracting those high quality players usually takes a number of seasons to happen and in that period from promotion to steadying the ship in the Premier League, those newly promoted teams are usually the ones getting beat nearly every week.

It begs the question of being the underdog every single week in the Premier League, or the more dominating team in the Championship. Seeing your favourite team turned over by the Premier League top four vs. being that team that puts three or four past a weaker team in the league below.
See examples of Stoke City, who've took a number of seasons to really set themselves as Premier League regulars. Or West Bromwich Albion who yo-yo'ed between the Premier League and Championship for a number of seasons before establishing themselves around the 2011/2012 season.

Whichever way your personal opinion sways, it's easy to see why the Championship is the most competitive league in England, if not the world. The thrill of a season ending promotion push or the battle for a playoff spot is something the Premier League cannot recreate.
Those fans who support clubs in the lower leagues of English football can only agree that while the top flight is the ultimate goal, the thrill of chasing that goal is so much sweeter than the realization of a relegation battle in the Premier League.

@ryanmcevoy