EFL Championship Playoff-Final Preview

Here We Go...

The Championship Play-off final at Wembley Stadium. Roll up, roll up for the richest game in football, worth an absolute ton of money for whoever wins it… and for the losers, the consolation prize of not being in the Premier League with all the greed and big club bias and games that you have no chance of winning.

It tells you something about the state of things, when promotion to the top division has a downside but that’s where we are but nonetheless, we all want to win today. Even if you’ve loved every second of being in the Championship, you want to win today because the novelty will soon wear off. This year we have been a very good team in the Championship, next year we probably won’t be quite as good because the wage bill will have to drop as the parachute payments decrease and the year after that, we might well be Norwich, which is something that nobody wants. The doom mongers are already talking about the negative impact that not getting promoted will have on one of Saints and Leeds, so we’ve got to make sure it’s them and not us that is looking at the balance sheet next season and wondering if we can hang onto their best players or sign any new ones.

So, let’s talk about winning.  Leeds and Saints accrued 90 and 87 points respectively, which in a vast majority of recent seasons would’ve been enough for automatic promotion.  Unfortunately, this year, Leicester dubiously managed to maintain a vast majority of their Premier League squad and signed new players on ridiculous money like Winks and Coady and won the league relatively comfortably… and no one saw Ipswich coming out of League 1 and into the top two. Leeds and Saints over the season have both been remarkably good, which is why it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anybody that Norwich and West Brom respectively were dispatched comfortably in the play-off semi-finals.  It should’ve come as no surprise because Leeds and Saints over the season were miles better than those two sides and a two-legged game will often bear that out. It’s just one game today though, the final game of a 49-game season and no one wants to see all their efforts end up in the bin and count for nothing.

Let's Have Some More of This

Saints of course beat Leeds twice this season and were the only team to do so. A 3-1 win at St Mary’s kick-started a 21 game unbeaten run in the league for us and got us in sight of automatic promotion before we somewhat folded. After the first few weeks, Leeds have been in the top three all season and around Christmas they were on a run for 13 straight wins and looked set to win the league, but they too fell away and ended up finishing third. Leeds still had an outside chance of automatic promotion when we visited Elland Road on the last day but put on a bit of a damp squib performance when faced with a surprisingly coherent Saints performance and we won that 2-1 and it was probably more comfortable than the scoreline suggests.

Winning those two games certainly does not mean that we just have to turn up today and we will win. The only real significance is in the tactics. In both games Daniel Farke sent out Leeds in a 4-2-3-1 formation, with his team frontloaded with their impressive attacking players. In both games Saints have had a lot of success breaking through midfield where Leeds were outnumbered with their four attacking players not being the best at tracking back. As we have discovered on a few occasions ourselves this season, if you don’t get the midfield screen right in front of the defence, even the best defenders will struggle and so will Junior Firpo, who is the opposite of one of the best defenders. I feel that Saints recent formation change to three at the back, has made us more solid and it completely suits every player that we have on the pitch and it may well give us the edge at Wembley. I honestly can’t see Farke leaving out one of his big four strikers so he will be relying on two of Gruev, Kamara and Archie Gray to subdue Downes, Aribo and Smallbone, who are all hitting excellent form at just the right time. Saints way to win this game is through the midfield and being incisive once we have played through the Leeds press.  Leads way of winning this game is to rely on the front four to do something brilliant between them, which they are more than capable of doing. In order to stop that, Saints of course have to defend in a compact fashion and with great concentration for however long it takes.  In both games against Leeds this season, it’s been concentration that has been the key to winning the game and I think I’m correct in saying that these are the only two games this season where we have had less possession than the opposition.

The Saints team I am expecting to play, starts off with goalkeeper Alex McCarthy who you could’ve got very long odds on appearing in a play-off final about two months ago when he was third choice goalkeeper are not even getting on the bench.  It’s still a bit of a mystery why Russell Martin promoted him from third choice to first with Gavin Bazunu‘s injury, but it has undoubtedly proven to be a very good decision with McCarthy rolling back the years to 2018 when he was Saints player of the year in the Gabbiadini at Swansea great escape season. Though he is not as good with his feet as Bazunu, he is undoubtedly a better shot stopper, so you win some you lose some.

The three central defenders well undoubtedly be Taylor Harwood-Bellis, Jan Bednarek and Jack Stephens. Russell Martin knows that these are three of our best players and so it makes sense to have a formation where all three of them are playing in their natural positions.  On the one hand it is surprising that he didn’t try until the last game of the season but on the other hand, there had been no break between games to coach the system in the past couple of months, until just before the Leeds game.  Both Harwood-Bellis and Stephens will have to be on full concentration to stop the threat from the Leeds wide men. KWP will need help on the right from THB to subdue Summerville and Stephens and Manning on the left will have to do a lot better against Gnonto than they did at Elland Road.

....And Some More of This

As I’ve just mentioned, KWP will be at right wing back and has been the best player in that position in the league this season. This will undoubtedly be his last game for Saints if we don’t win and it might be his last game even if we do, depending on what offers are coming in the summer. That’s for another day though and on Sunday, we just need another massive performance from him both subduing Summerville and putting the aforementioned Firpo under pressure going forward.  Ryan Manning will probably be left wing back but it might be Ryan Fraser.  I’m sure we’ll see one start and the other finish the game.

The midfield picks itself because it will be our best player Flynn Downes, Will Smallbone and Joe Aribo. With Stuart Armstrong getting injured in the game against Cardiff just before the end of the season, these three had to step up and the formation change seems to have really helped them. I do have a minor concern about Smallbone and Aribo’s stamina to last 90 or maybe 120 minutes at Wembley, but they have been playing so well recently. In the event of one of them having to come off we have Shea Charles or Joe Rothwell and whilst they are capable players, they are nowhere near the level of those that they would be replacing.

The forwards will be Adam Armstrong and one other, and that one other will be either Che Adams or David Brooks.  If Adams is fit, I suspect he will start and Brooks will be used off the bench later in the game. There is also (whisper quietly) Ross Stewart who you would hope would be fit enough to do something off of the bench should he be needed and should Che not last 90 minutes. With Leeds strength being in attacking areas, Armstrong and Adams (or whoever) have to match that. In the league game recently those two caused absolute nightmares for Ampadu and Rodon by never being in a place where they could be easily marked. We also caused problems for Leeds down our right where KWP got forward to good affect and absolutely terrified Junior Firpo who, let’s face it, it’s half decent as an attacking full-back but he is a dreadful defender.

I’m expecting the Leeds lineup to be 4-2-3-1 and that Farke will have nothing new to bring to this game from a tactical perspective.  He’ll get slaughtered if he leaves out one of the forwards and loses, so I don’t see him doing it. – Meslier; Gray, Rodon, Ampadu, Firpo; Gruev, Kamara; Summerville, Rutter, Gnonto, Piroe.

Can we win? Of course we can win if we manage the occasion and don’t get stage fright. We have proved that we can beat them if we go forward with intent when we can.  We can’t be comfortable and just knock the ball about with no purpose.  We had a pretty solid game plan in both of those previous Leeds games and in addition, Russell Martin will not want to get beat by Daniel Farke and that sub-plot exists because Farke drummed him out of Norwich as a player. Leeds have players that can hurt us so we have to do our jobs properly and concentration is going to be key. The wide-open Spaces of Wembley will in my opinion suit the team who are more compact defensively and that should be us, which may seem like a strange thing to say considering Leeds let in twenty less goals than us over the season, but really all that matters about defensive solidity is the last few weeks and we have been undeniably better.

... and Then This

The one thing I worry about is that we have one of those days where we can’t hit a barn door.  You only have to go back a few games to Cardiff away to find the last time that happened. If Che Adams (or whoever) and Adam Armstrong have decent games upfront, then we have a hell of a chance.  Leeds might have most of the ball as they have had in both of the league games but like in both of the league games, when we win the ball, we have to be incisive and we have to break quickly and the spaces will be there and this is where Smallbone and Aribo will be key. Can they find the passes through to the forwards?

Leeds have the players up front who can hurt us and if they do and score early, we have to be ready to play the long game and stay in touch.  We cannot of course, afford to get blown away as Norwich were in the semi-final at Elland Road.  But, first things first, we need to start well and show that we are not going to be daunted by the occasion. If we do that, then we have a chance of being back in the Premier League in August but if it doesn’t happen and it’s the Championship again, so be it.  It’s been a really good season whatever happens.

Up the Fucking Saints.

Hopefully Russell can Recreate This on Sunday