Huge Money And A Return From The Wilderness At Stake

It’s often called the most valuable game in sport. The play-offs of English soccer’s second tier Championship offer one club a chance of Premier League soccer next season, and all the riches that come with it.

For the winner, that’s estimated to be between $150 million and $300 million. Such is the gap between the Championship and the Premier League in terms of broadcast and commercial revenue.

But as well as those millions, for one of the four teams in this year’s play-offs, it will also be the fairytale ending to their own long journey to the bottom and back again.

Sunderland’s story-arc, or at least the downward-spiral part of it, has been broadcast around the world on the Netflix
NFLX
series Sunderland ‘Til I Die.

For neutrals, Sunderland’s plummet down the leagues was compelling viewing, for fans of the Black Cats, it was a horror story. It was meant to show the club’s push for an immediate return to the Premier League, but instead they got relegated from the Championship in season one, and spent the remaining seasons in League One, English soccer’s third tier.

Sunderland rebuilt their squad and finally won promotion back to the Championship last season, beating Sheffield Wednesday and Wycombe Wanderers in the League One play-offs.

No side has managed back-to-back promotions to the Premier League since Southampton in 2012, but Sunderland have a chance to do just that. For much of this season, promotion looked unlikely. Sunderland were as low as 12th in the Championship in early March before their young side went on a nine-game unbeaten run that saw them leapfrog Millwall into the play-off spots on the final day of the season.

A win at Wembley will offer cathartic release after all of former CEO Martin Bain’s use of the clubs’ cryo-chamber, former owner Charlie Methven’s DJ choices, their overpriced purchase of Will Grigg and all the other moments that fans at the Stadium of Light have suffered through recently.

Sunderland’s ownership woes are nothing compared to Coventry City though.

After 34 years in the top-flight, they were relegated from the Premier League in 2000-01 before plummeting right down the leagues, dropping as low as England’s fourth tier, League Two, in 2017.

In the background has been a stadium ownership saga that pushed the club into liquidation and forced them to play their home matches a one-hour drive away in Northampton in 2013-14 and in Birmingham in 2019 to 2021. Even this season saw Coventry handed an eviction notice and the club currently doesn’t have a deal in place to use the stadium next season.

A takeover in January seems to have changed their fortunes off the pitch, and as if a weight has been lifted, Coventry have flown up the table.

They were bottom after ten games, partly due to a fixture backlog caused by the poor quality of their pitch after their stadium was used for rugby in the Commonwealth Games. But since the takeover, Coventry have been flying, and have only lost two games since the end of January.

Swedish striker Viktor Gyokeres has been a huge part of that resurgence. His 21 goals and 10 assists are the most goal contributions in the Championship, and the 24-year-old is attracting a lot of interest from Premier League sides.

Like Coventry, Middlesbrough have turned around their form dramatically after a poor start to the season.

They were just one place above the relegation zone when they brought in head coach Michael Carrick in October. The former Manchester United midfielder has had a similar impact at Middlesbrough as Steve Cooper had at Nottingham Forest last season, and at one point won 14 out of 17 matches to surge up the table, falling not too far short of the automatic promotion places.

He’s done that through possession soccer, with Middlesbrough having better possession and pass success rates than anyone else in the Championship bar Swansea and Burnley. Boro’s turnaround has been helped by striker Chuba Akpom. The former Arsenal youth player has scored 28 league goals this season, the most in the division.

Luton Town are the only one of the play-off sides to be in the Championship play-offs for the second year in a row. Last season, before their play-off semi-final defeat to Huddersfield Town, much was made of how their Kenilworth Road ground was not up to Premier League standards. Luton plan to build a new stadium, but in the meantime might have to spend a seven-figure sum to bring their ground up to EPL regulations, and even then, it would be the smallest capacity ground to ever be used in the Premier League.

Luton were last in the top tier in 1991-92, but have since fallen even further down the leagues than their play-off rivals, dropping down to the Conference, English soccer’s fifth tier, from 2010 to 2014. After climbing all the way back up England’s soccer pyramid, Luton had been punching above their weight under head coach Nathan Jones until he was poached by Premier League side Southampton in October. His replacement, Rob Edwards has pushed on though, losing just two games since Christmas.

With all four play-off teams in decent form over the latter stages of the season, this year’s Championship play-offs is impossible to call.

But after years of misery in the lower tiers of English soccer, Coventry City, Luton Town or Sunderland could change their long-term prospects dramatically should they win the final at Wembley on May 27.