I'm not too sure which of these options I prefer - ideally none of them really.
Although not quite to the same extent as some of my peers, my confidence in Abellio is somewhat diminished having seen their current operation in practice. National Express may not have been ousted for service quality reasons but it's not been very long since they lost the franchise and I don't recall it being all that impressive either. That just leaves First.
My experiences of First in recent times will obviously be Great Western and Capital Connect. Capital Connect I found Thameslink punctuality pretty atrocious, but then it's not improved yet under Govia's management either. Great Western I associate with eye-wateringly high fares, but reasonable, if ageing rolling stock. Certainly FGW do a ten times better job of looking after their Mk3s and 150s than the respective Abellio franchises have. The 150s on the St Ives Bay show their age a little but they're respectable and pleasant enough inside, the Northern sprinters I've used have been pretty rough. Likewise despite their age I find FGW Mk3s very nice to travel on, other than the excessively bright lights and questionably-placed power sockets nobody can use.
My memories of First running the Great Eastern franchise were fairly positive, the only exception being their poor decision to run 4-car metro services at weekends resulting in crush loading of every service. Thankfully that's no longer relevant, so if I had to pick from the three bids, I'd probably pick first. They also seemed to do a fairly reasonable job of keeping Scotrail in order, which can't be an especially easy franchise to run either.
If Stagecoach had bid on their own, or in partnership with a company I have less of a negative opinion of, I'd probably go for them as I think they do a pretty fair job of running the franchises they've got so far. SWT routinely impresses me with both value for money, rolling stock condition (including their oldest units) and even though their delay minutes count is pretty poor, I've found them typically a little more punctual than Abellio, if not by all that much.
It's all down to investment really, who is going to do the best job of handling the introduction of new routes, timetables and rolling stock? With Stagecoach the minority shareholder, I just have the horrible nagging feeling based on prior experience that Abellio will take the cheap way out. I also find myself thinking National Express might do the same. They do a good job of running c2c, but apart from maintaining the status quo, there's no real need for major investment there as to my recollection that was almost all handled by Prism shortly before the takeover (correct me if I'm wrong there) - as well as Network Rail-related stuff.
When NX lost the franchise to Abellio I thought 'ah good, someone else is going to take over and hopefully improve' - I can't say that's been what's happened in practice. Conversely, I don't recall having the same feelings about NX taking over from FGE, in fact I almost thought 'that's a shame, were they doing it wrong then?' - but then, back in those days I wasn't a regular London commuter!
Monopolistic concerns or otherwise, is the antipathy towards Stagecoach group shown here really warranted?