Bristol City

It's been almost 30 years since Bristol City were in the top flight of English Football, but right now they are tied at the top with with West Brom.

I think it would be interesting to see clubs like Bristol City and Stoke who are currently sitting fourth back in the Championship back in the top division.

I agree this would be interesting, but i think being able to stay in the premiership will take at least 3 years. This is how i see it, smaller teams that do well in the championship and manage to break into the premiership like Derby that make it will just end up becoming the premierships whipping boys (like Derby). But with the amount of money they get from the prem (16mil for the last placed team i believe), they should be able to come back up and hopefully with the money they've obtained will be able to come straight back up. I definatly see this happening in the case of Derby as they've got everything in place for the future, Great manager especially in times of promotion and relegation, Foreign owners willing to pump money in, in exchange for complete control of club and license to embarress at will and a huge premiership relegation war chest. Though the fa cup this year is restoring my faith in success without money, so hopefully i'm wrong.

Most so called experts expect Bristol City and Stoke to be as bad if not worse than Derby. I have seen them play a couple of times and they don't look Premier quality. But if they manage to get promoted it is because they have been the best teams in the Championships so they would deserve it. I would expect that Watford, Charlton or West Brom would have a better chance of competing with the bottom third of the Premier and have a better chance of staying up. A lot would depend on the money Bristol City and Stoke have to spend if they make it to the Premier, I expect they would have to bring in quite a few new players who have had premier experience or at least the quality to play in the Premier.

I think the 3 year thing that Goonarmy speaks of is pretty accurate, and seems set to become the norm. I hope not. There is evidence though.
Sunderland came up, embarassed themselves completely (lowest total ever?) went down, and now find themselves back in the Premier League, doing well(-ish) and should stay up. The same could be possible for Derby, who as GA says could go down, benefit from the money they earned in the league and the big investor they snapped up whilst part of it, in order to come back up. It would be a sorry state if it all went that way, but I guess it still turns out that a Championship side, who did well in a given a year, and deserved their Premier League run, achieved it...albeit 2 or 3 years after their first stint in the league.
The Premier League goes from strength to strength and its good to see the competitiveness of the Championship never dies. As long as it never ends up the same 3 teams going up and down each year, then we dont have a massive problem.