Sheffield United 1-2 Sunderland: Championship playoff final – as it happened

Tom Watson’s last kick as a Sunderland player was a dramatic injury-time winner that secured promotion to the Premier League

For far too long playoffs have felt impossibly high altitude for a Sheffield United side who have never won promotion this way, losing four finals. Wilder has addressed theproblem by reminding his players that the Wembley air is really not all that thin and maintaining that history is bunk.

His hopes of avoiding another demoralising repetition of the past should be enhanced by Gustavo Hamer’s presence. Two years ago the Brazil-born attacking midfielder scored for Coventry against Luton at Wembley and, as the Championship player of the season, he possesses the confidence and class to alter the Blades’ playoff story.

What’s trigonometry got to do with it?

During Le Bris’s teenage years in the western Breton village of Pont-l’Abbé, he devoted his spare time to completing an in-depth analysis of Arsène Wenger’s tactics as Monaco’s manager. As an adult, he spent holidays touring clubs across Spain and England – Arsenal, Chelsea, Crystal Palace, Everton and Leeds included – to watch their coaches. “He’s not someone who shouts at you,” the Sunderland striker Wilson Isidor says, “but he makes you understand things really, really thoroughly.” The winger Patrick Roberts agrees. “He’s efficient,” he says. “He’s brought us new ideas and he’s capable of changing our play depending on the opponent. He’s modern.”

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Sheffield United hope luck will change in poignant playoff final against Sunderland

Blades have come up short in their four previous attempts to gain promotion via an end-of-season showpiece final

When the half-time whistle blows at Wembley on Saturday afternoon, Tom Lockyer will temporarily replace Sheffield United and Sunderland as the centre of attention.

It is two years since Lockyer collapsed on England’s most famous pitch after experiencing atrial fibrillation during Luton’s Championship playoff final win against Coventry and almost 18 months since he had a cardiac arrest and almost died while playing for the club at Bournemouth.

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Ivan Toney recalled to England squad, Spurs head for trophy parade: football news – live

The latest omission of Jack Grealish isn’t a surprise. Grealish is a bit-part player at Manchester City these days and wasn’t used in last weekend’s FA Cup final defeat by Crystal Palace. The match winner in that game, Eberechi Eze, is included. The Palace duo of Marc Guéhi and Adam Wharton miss out, presumably due to injury (although it should be said Tuchel hasn’t seemed entirely convinced by Guéhi).

Tuchel has not been able to name Marcus Rashford because of injury; West Ham’s Jarrod Bowen misses out after failing to take his opportunity last time. Newcastle’s Dan Burn gets another go.

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Sunderland face playoffs with teenage stars, left-field Le Bris but investment issues

The club is expertly run but if Black Cats defeat Sheffield United, commercial concerns could be a headache

It is May 2024 and Illan Meslier, the Leeds goalkeeper, is singing the praises of a former Lorient youth coach whose astute mentoring shaped his career. But who is this left-field thinker who dispatched his young goalkeepers to undergo professional boxing training, spend hours performing acrobatics on trampolines and talk intensely to sports psychologists? Régis Le Bris eventually became Lorient’s first-team manager in 2022 but, after a promising opening season, the Breton team were relegated from Ligue 1 last spring. No matter; a month on from that chat with Meslier in North Yorkshire, Sunderland named Le Bris as their head coach and, now, the 49-year-old is preparing to lead the club out at Wembley on Saturday.

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Field Notes: The birth of the playoffs, English football’s biggest weekend

The concept of an end-of-season tournament to determine the final promotions was borne of trial and error

With the Guardian’s unstoppable rise to global dominance** we at Guardian US thought we’d run a series of articles for fans wishing to improve their knowledge of the sport’s history and storylines, hopefully in a way that doesn’t patronise you to within an inch of your life. A warning: If you’re the kind of person that finds The Blizzard too populist this may not be the series for you.

** Actual dominance may not be global. Or dominant

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Hull sack head coach Rubén Sellés despite avoiding drop

  • Club escaped Championship relegation on final day
  • Spaniard won nine of 27 league games in charge

Hull have sacked their head coach, Rubén Sellés, after less than six months in charge.

The club escaped Championship relegation on the final day of the season on goal difference, having been bottom when Sellés was appointed in December. The 41-year-old Spaniard is the third manager sacked by the Hull owner, Acun Ilicali, in the past 12 months and the club now begin their search for a fifth permanent coach since the Turkish media executive took control in early 2022.

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Watford appoint Paulo Pezzolano as 18th permanent manager since 2013

  • Former Valladolid manager is ‘the leader we need’
  • Hornets finished 14th in Championship this season

Watford have announced the appointment of Paulo Pezzolano as their new head coach. The 42-year-old Uruguayan succeeds Tom Cleverley, who was sacked on 6 May following the Hornets’ disappointing 14th-place finish in the Championship.

Pezzolano becomes Watford’s 18th permanent manager since Gianfranco Zola left in December 2013.

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O’Hare lands last blow on Bristol City as Sheffield United barrel into playoff final

For a side with such a horrendous record in the EFL playoffs, the way Sheffield United coasted through their semi-final’s two legs into the Championship’s showpiece game at Wembley did little to suggest they are a team with a hoodoo hanging over their heads.

In many ways, history is stacked against the Blades: nine previous attempts at the playoffs, five semi-final defeats and four heartbreaking final losses. But if there was one crumb of comfort for manager Chris Wilder and his side in missing out on automatic promotion with a couple of games to spare, it was the fact that they had time to regather themselves and prepare for the playoffs.

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Sheffield United 3-0 Bristol City (6-0 agg: Championship playoff semi-final, second leg – as it happened

Blades made no mistake in the second leg, completing the job and will head to Wembley after a record aggregate scoreline

3 min: Early snap shot from Twine, the ball falling loose after Ahmedhodzic’s touch. This time the forward can’t get enough purchase but a moment to get people wondering.

1 min: It’s a slow start. Tommy Cannon is the straight man to Kieffer Moore, rather than Bobby Ball.

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Sunderland desperate to turn power back on as Coventry playoff awaits

Régis Le Bris’s side have lost five in a row before meeting with Frank Lampard’s resurgent Sky Blues

Sunderland’s players are unlikely to forget Monday 28 April any time soon. Régis Le Bris’s squad were in Portugal, settling into a pre-playoff training camp when the lights went out as one of Europe’s biggest power cuts plunged the Iberian peninsula into chaos.

Although Le Bris made light of the inconvenience and emphasised that the Algarve sunshine had been “re-energising” no one is quite sure whether he has managed to fix his team’s own worrying electrical faults.

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‘Shackles off’: Bristol City and Vyner set for Championship playoff clash

Zak Vyner joined the club aged eight and as an ever-present this season is vital to hopes of getting past Sheffield United

When Bristol City’s players reconvened on Monday, there was only one place to start in the team meeting: those scenes of euphoria at Ashton Gate after the club secured a Championship playoff spot for the first time in 17 years, and the search party for Yu Hirakawa, who, as the captain Jason Knight puts it, was getting thrown about on the pitch as teammates waited in the dressing room for him to be retrieved. Liam Manning shared with his squad images and videos of supporters to underline the wider meaning, and footage of the Japanese winger crowdsurfing. “It got a laugh from the lads,” says Manning. “He was in a state of shock … I asked him: ‘Would that happen in Japan?’ He said: ‘No, never.’”

Now City, who entertain Sheffield United in the first leg of their playoff semi-final on Thursday, are hoping to enter uncharted territory. The Robins have not played in the top flight since May 1980 and Manning has heard the line about Bristol being the biggest city not to host Premier League football “a million times”. He is not the only one. The defender Zak Vyner, the longest-serving player who joined aged eight, was in the crowd at Wembley, aged 11, for the playoff final against Hull City in 2008, when Dean Windass volleyed in to break City hearts.

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Watford sack Tom Cleverley as head coach after 14th-place Championship finish

  • Cleverley first took job on interim basis in March 2024
  • ‘Time has come for a change,’ says sporting director

Watford have sacked Tom Cleverley as their head coach after the club finished 14th in the Championship in his first full season. Cleverley took over on an interim basis in March 2024 and was given the job permanently last summer. After five wins since the turn of the year, and one point from the final five games, the 35-year-old has lost his job.

The sporting director, Gian Luca Nani, said: “We thank Tom for his service – not just in his role as head coach but for everything he has given Watford as a player and member of staff.

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Championship final day: Leeds win title as Luton are relegated again – as it happened

Portsmouth (4-2-3-1) Killip; Devlin, Shaughnessy, Atkinson, Ogilvie; Potts, Lang; Blair, Pack, Murphy; Bishop.
Subs: Schmid, Poole, Bramall, Dozzell, Hayden, Gordon, Ritchie, Saydee, O’Mahony.

Hull (4-2-3-1) Pandur; Lewie Coyle, Egan, Hughes, McLoughlin; Crooks, Puerta; Kamara, Gelhardt, Joseph; Joao Pedro.
Subs: Lo-Tutala, Jones, Lincoln, Burns, Alzate, Drameh, Amrabat, Palmer, Burstow.

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Championship relegation lurking for Stoke, Derby, Preston, Luton or Hull

Five teams fight to avoid joining Cardiff and Plymouth in dropping to League One on the season’s final day

It is high season for engravers, a fertile few weeks for after-dinner speakers to make hay at elaborate end-of-season dos, but not every Championship team has something worth celebrating. Last Saturday, three hours after Cardiff’s players sank to the turf when the final whistle confirmed their relegation to the third tier, a division the club has not played in for 22 years, the squad slipped into suits for their annual black-tie awards night in a suite overlooking the same surface.

At some point, Rubén Sellés, the Hull head coach, seemingly got wind of the jarring circumstances and cancelled his team’s bash, which had been scheduled for Tuesday, to prevent a similarly tone-deaf evening.

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How Wrexham and Birmingham City’s US owners got one step from the Premier League

Tom Brady, Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney’s celebrity status isn’t the only thing that led their clubs to the Championship

It’s been over four decades since Wrexham were last in the second tier of English football and a lot has changed in that time. (A lot has changed in four years, never mind four decades.) Four years ago, Wales’ oldest soccer club were at a non-league nadir. Now, they are preparing for life in the Championship, propelled to three straight promotions by the stardust (and money) of Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney.

Birmingham City’s second tier exile was much shorter – just a single season – but like Wrexham their promotion had the spotlight of celebrity on it. While Wrexham have Reynolds and McElhenney, Birmingham have Tom Brady (albeit it in a far smaller profile). The English lower leagues have never been so glamorous, what with Wrexham players appearing in Marvel movies and David Beckham attending matches.

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