Cardiff earned promotion back to the Championship from League One last season and were quite entertaining to watch in doing so.

Brian Barry-Murphy has a very interesting style of play which comes from the Manchester City academy and it does open up the Welsh side to be involved in high scoring matches.

Cardiff netted 50 goals across their 23 home games in League One last term (2.17 per game), only Lincoln (53) scored more goals at home than the Bluebirds.

Both of their official friendly matches produced 3+ goals, with Cardiff losing 6-0 to Midtjylland and coming away 4-1 winners over Roma. 

Swindon’s 23 away matches in League Two last season produced 64 goals (2.78 per game), and both of their friendly matches against Crystal Palace and Bristol City have also produced 3+ goals. 

MK Dons maintained the best away record of any side in League Two last season, losing just four of their 23 away matches and netting 45 goals in the process (1.95 per game).

This is an obvious step up in quality for Paul Warne’s side, but they’ll fancy themselves to make a bit of a statement with there being plenty of optimism around MK Dons’ chances of being competitive in League One this term.

Norwich really struggled to keep sides out at Carrow Road in the Championship last season, conceding more goals than they scored (28-27) and only winning nine of their 23 home matches.

Norwich are the favourites here, but I think MK Dons can cause problems and get on the scoresheet to make this an entertaining contest. 

There was a 32 point gap between these sides in League Two last season, and I think we’ll see that disparity in this cup tie with Salford looking even stronger than they did last term.

Salford finished just one point below an automatic promotion spot last term and are one of the favourites to go up this season after seven seasons stuck in League Two.

Only Bromley and Cambridge, who both earned promotion last season, picked up more points at home than Salford in League Two last campaign. Salford won 14 of their 23 matches (60%) and notably only conceded 24 goals across these games. 

By contrast, only Crawley (15) picked up fewer points on the road in League Two last term than Shrewsbury (16) with this translating to just four wins from their 23 outings.

The Championship can be a bit of a tricky league at times, but I do think West Ham have more than enough to come straight back up to the Premier League at the first time of asking.

That isn’t their focus here in the early stages of the EFL Cup, but it is a good opportunity to face off against a fellow Championship side and allow Nuno Espírito Santo to get a gauge for where West Ham are at after losing some key players to big money over the summer.

Portsmouth finished just eight points clear of the drop zone in the Championship last term, and are tipped to struggle again at the bottom of the table this campaign. 

They only managed to win six of their 23 away matches, notably conceding 41 goals across these games - only Sheffield Wednesday (45) conceded more away goals than Portsmouth in the Championship last season.