Sky Sports named Steve Coppell as manager for their 'Championship Elite' side in the build-up to the EFL season kick-off.

From 2024/25, the EFL and its Clubs will embark on a record domestic rights deal with broadcaster Sky Sports worth £935m over a five-year period.

Over 1,000 of the EFL’s 1,891 games across the Sky Bet EFL, Carabao Cup and Bristol Street Motors Trophy will be broadcast, with every one of the 72 EFL Clubs to be featured live on Sky more than 20 times this season.

As part of their build-up to the new campaign, they tasked EFL experts Simeon Gholam and Sam Blitz to name an 'Elite' Championship XI of players, which included the likes of Jack Grealish, Gareth Bale and Jude Bellingham.

Tasked with leading the team was Royals legend Coppell, who famously took the club to the Championship title in 2006 in record-breaking fashion, losing just twice and accumulating a whopping 106 points.

Explaining their thought process behind the selection of Coppell, Gholam commented: "If we’re talking about incredible individual seasons, there is only one man and that is Steve Coppell, the man who took Reading to promotion in 2005/06 with a total of points yet to be beaten, 106. We’ve seen brilliant teams since then get nowhere near that total and the more seasons that go through, the more impressive it looks."

Reading went on to finish eighth in their first Premier League season, still a club-record finish.