All Championship clubs will be owned by some capricious Italian who goes through managers like normal men eat peanuts, it has been announced.

The Italians, resolutely eccentric, are determined to deflect the lion’s share of the national footballing spotlight from the Premier League and onto its second tier.

In what is already being described as “almost like some kind of organised heist”, it has emerged that Massimo Cellino and Giampaolo Pozzo, supremos of Leeds United and Watford respectively, will be at the ring’s epicentre commandeering profits, ordering hits and such and such.

With the Championship forecast to have become a seething hive of flamboyant Italian stereotypes by 2016, major broadcasters around the world have been locked in crunch talks with a view to switching the emphasis of their live football coverage.

Speaking exclusively to Football Burp, BSkyB chairman Nicholas Ferguson outlined his vision of a product that combined the visceral thrill of live football with the zip and plot intrigue of GoodFellas.

He roared: “Can you imagine such a thing? We’d be quadrillionaires if all Championship clubs went that way.

“Don’t tell me you wouldn’t watch Brentford v Millwall if there was a chance that one of the owners might beat the other to death for insulting him about being a shoeshine boy in his younger days.

“You’d be mad not to watch that.”