Football – England – Championship Play-off Final
Saturday 24th May 2014 – Kickoff: 1500hrs
After some 46 regular league matches and two semi-final legs, Saturday marks the climax of the Championship season in what is rapidly becoming billed as the second ‘cup final’ with Derby County and QPR vying for a coveted place in the Premier League – reportedly worth around a 30 million windfall for the winning team.
Wembley is the venue, and firstly I’ll turn my attentions to Derby County who surely couldn’t have imagined beyond their wildest dreams they would be challenging for promotion up to the Premiership when the decision was made to sack former manager Nigel Clough at the end of last September.
At the time, Derby were languishing in 14th place when Steve McClaren took over the reigns at the iPro Stadium, and since then he has guided his Rams outfit to a Wembley play-off final. Derby County finished the regular season in 3rd place with an overall record of 25-10-11 84/52, scoring the most goals in the Championship.
When people wondered if McClaren’s side could deal with Oscar Garcia’s stubborn Brighton outfit over two legs in the semi-final, the answer became an emphatic ‘yes’ when the Rams edged The Seagulls at the AMEX Stadium 2-1 and then followed that up with a resounding 4-1 thrashing of the south coast side to book their place at Wembley.
In short, goals have been the key to McClaren’s and Derby’s success so far and even without the services of their talismanic midfielder Craig Bryson (16 goals, 12 assists), they managed to stick four past Brighton in the second leg. Bryson missed that match with a back complaint but is expected to be named in the squad for the final and should be considered as an anytime goalscorer for The Rams along with striker Chris Martin (22 goals, 8 assists).
At the time of McClaren’s appointment, Harry Redknapp’s QPR side were sitting joint top of the Championship with Burnley and were seemingly on course for automatic promotion back up to the Premier League with a squad laden with internationals and previous Premiership experience.
But, while Burnley continued their consistency in getting results home and away, QPR’s promotion challenge faltered at the beginning of February where they failed to win a single match in five fixtures and this was to have a serious impact upon their promotion chances. In fact, The R’s eventually finished in fourth place some 13 points adrift of Burnley who ended up getting promoted alongside Leicester City.
Redknapp’s approach has differed from McClaren’s seemingly swashbuckling ways in that he has built his squad around a solid defensive line-up and they were certainly hard to score against at Loftus Road during the regular season, letting in just 18 goals (only 4 more than Burnley at Turf Moor). They nullified rather than truly beat their semi-final opponents Wigan Athletic with both ties ending up in draws after 90 minutes – 0-0 at the DW Stadium and 1-1 at Loftus Road, needing extra time to negotiate their way to this afternoon’s final.
At the business end, they have striker and leading goalscorer Charlie Austin (19 goals) who was plucked (ironically) from Burnley and the pressure in his own mind must be building up as he is not yet guaranteed a place in the Premiership, unlike his former colleagues at Turf Moor!
To wrap up then, in what promises to be a fascinating clash between McClaren’s Derby County and Redknapp’s QPR, I feel that Derby just have more goals in them than their opponents today, and as we all know, it’s goals that win games, or in this case, promotion to the top flight. I’ll therefore back Derby County to come up trumps today with perhaps a 2-1 win.
Pick: Derby County straight win @ 2.40 Coral
