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Football seems to be a common occurrence in today’s society, much like Black Friday.

Thankfully, Saturday is still the standard day for us to get our daily fix, at least for the moment, and this weekend offers us yet another opportunity to enjoy the EFL’s unpredictable world.

A new manager is making his Middlesbrough debut, and another boss is facing pressure at West Brom and Millwall, who are all set to do anything to sabotage the situation.

Kim Hellberg may have spent a few sleepless nights planning his next step up the managerial ladder because life is full of choices.

Middlesbrough helped him leave Stockholm and move to Teesside after he had already been courted by Swansea and had ties to Norwich.

Is it a game? Given that he lacks any previous English football experience, it’s possible, but how did you acquire that experience in the first place? He is not going to be overawed because he is a Hammarby native who has more than 24 000 home fans on average.

The 37-year-old is in at the bottom of the standings on Saturday against in-form Derby (15:00 GMT), having watched Coventry’s 4-2 home defeat on Tuesday.

He told BBC Radio Tees, “I’m proud to be here, and I’m proud to work very hard for 15 years as a coach to get here. Going from the lowest division in Sweden to England is a big step,” he said.

With the Rams’ six victories in their previous seven games propelling them to eighth place, some going given that they only won one of their opening 10 games, the Rams have already moved up to eighth place.

When a manager is replaced, everyone in football is always in the spotlight. Isn’t that a lovely industry, isn’t it?

As they prepare to face Swansea (15:00 GMT), who recently traded Alan Sheehan for Vitor Matos, Ryan Mason has felt the need to mention that when head coaches start arguing about their fixture schedule. It never feels like a good idea.

According to Mason, “We’ve had to play away from home twice on Wednesday and Saturday, and both times against a team that played at home on Wednesday,” in the past six weeks.

“I anticipated that we would have the advantage this time, but somehow we have to play against a team that has played 24 hours before us at home.”

For some reason, I’ve looked at the schedules and fixture lists of every other team, and we’re getting the worst of them.

No-one likes us, but “we don’t care,” is a well-known saying in The Den’s crowds. Could Millwall be the season’s feelgood tale?

With “an injury list as long as my arm” and a budget more expensive than Selfridges, boss Alex Neil might be able to restore them to their elusive fourth-place status.

We’ve won four out of five at home, and we’ve been fourth in the table since the start of the season, and that’s just going on. “The lads deserve a lot of credit for that,” Neil said on BBC Radio London.

When Southampton enter SE16 (15:00 GMT), Millwall’s credentials will get a lot of work.

Michael Duff received a lot of admiration for leading Cheltenham to League Two promotion and Barnsley to the League One play-off final.

The former Burnley defender’s star was waning and he may have been wondering when his next opportunity might arise, 21 months later and after unsuccessful stints at Swansea and Huddersfield.

He and Wycombe both made the most of their September friendship, which fortunately they found each other in September.

The Chairboys have only lost one of their nine league games since Duff’s appointment, and no other team has collected more than 14 points in their final six games, which places them just four points short of the top six.

They could finish first in League Two on Saturday in their second full year in the EFL.

They will need to defeat Walsall (15:00 GMT) and hope Swindon slips up at Chesterfield to achieve this, which Andy Woodman and his team have accomplished so far.

Bromley have the division’s best home record and a four-game winning streak, which has helped them enter the promotion picture thanks to their top scorer from the previous six seasons, Michael Cheek, who already has eight this year.

Already this season’s opening, Cheeek told BBC Radio London. “It’s a huge game,” Cheeek said.

It seems like we continue to improve year on year, with the exception of perhaps too many draws at the start of the season, but it seems like we are now on a winning formula.

Although Walsall have a history of success, there has been much written about the 12-point lead they blew at the top last year. However, Bromley will benefit from their own home defeats, which have been a lot of praise.

The launch date for R360, the proposed global rugby series aimed at the game’s elite players, has been postponed by two years to 2028, which raises questions about the project’s viability.

According to R360 board member and former England center Mike Tindall, “the decision to shift our launch to 2028 is a strategic decision based on timing.”

“Lancencing under compressed timelines would neither produce the long-term commercial impact the sport deserves nor meet the standards we set for R360.”

Any R360 recruits barred from combining the new venture with their international careers, along with the British and Irish Lions, eight world-renowned Test nations.

Any player switching to R360 will be prohibited from competing in Australian rugby league for a 10-year period by the NRL. Any players who had agreed to participate in the proposed 2026 launch will now be fired from their contracts.

R360 co-founder Stuart Hooper reiterated his desire for a launch in 2028 and for R360 to become an established part of the rugby calendar in an email to players that the BBC saw.

R360’s initial plan to hold its inaugural event in October 2026, consisting of eight men’s and four women’s teams, was put under pressure due to the failure of the organizers to obtain World Rugby’s sanction.

The game’s governing body was questioned about the organization of the event and the availability of players for international combat after receiving more than 100 pages of R360’s plans.

R360 was only four months away from the planned start of the new circuit’s first season that World Rugby could have approved.

According to Tindall, who claimed in September that R360 was “on plan and, in some areas, ahead of plan,” “ensuring player welfare, supporting their international ambitions, and working collaboratively with the global game”

Due to the decision to postpone its two-year launch, R360 won’t attempt to compete in the same year as the men’s rugby world cup and the first women’s lions tour, which was a landmark event.

However, 2028 is the year’s plan for the inaugural Club World Cup, an event that brings together the best domestic rivals from both hemispheres and was accelerated by the threat of R360.

After several snubs during its initial search for stars, R360 now faces the challenge of resuming its player recruitment.

With Northampton’s Fin Smith another reported target, who is also renewing his contract with his current club, Sale and England fly-half George Ford turned down an offer.

R360 has been attempting to add to their roster, while global superstars Finn Russell and Antoine Dupont have also signed new contracts with Bath and Toulouse, respectively.

Only a few players resigned because of the coordinated action by leading Test nations and the possibility of a decade-long NRL ban, according to R360, which claims it had 200 players sign provisional agreements.

“As a board, we are unwaveringly determined to realize R360 on a global scale.” We’re creating something innovative and original that will appeal to people around the world, and Tindall is excited to debut it in 2028.

Martin Gilbert, a Scottish businessman, was appointed chairman and investor after unsuccessful negotiations to establish a third Scottish professional rugby team in Aberdeen ten years ago.

R360’s goal is to draw in new audiences while retaining fans of international rugby.

Their plan is ambitious, including sending the game’s biggest names to newly formed franchises and organizing a trip through the world’s most exciting cities.

MetLife Stadium in New York, Nou Camp in Barcelona, and Croke Park in Dublin were all proposed as potential locations, along with a promise to create a weekend-long spectacle featuring music acts, celebrity appearances, and fan zones.

R360 advertised for a Head of Celebrity Management position along with an operations director position last month to ensure the event had the biggest possible impact.

However, it faces a lot of difficulties.

Finding space for a roster of athletes from both hemispheres and genders to appear at the same events is challenging due to Rugby’s congested calendar.

The Rugby Championship was also hampered, and R360’s initial plans clashed with the Women’s Six Nations.

Without making sure that players can participate in Tests, World Rugby will never be able to ratify them, and recruits will have to choose between R360 and their respective nations.

Players need to be heavily compensated and lured out of the well-established clubs because the costs involved in setting up and transporting the roadshow model are prohibitive.

R360 were offering a third more than players could earn in the Prem, according to Sale Director of Rugby Alex Sanderson.

For a launch in 2028, that premium may need to be raised after one false start.

A regular broadcast slot being impossible due to the various time zones, it is believed that R360 are betting on ticket sales and upcoming franchise sales to make money. However, a start-up event in untrained territories needs to break through.