Dear Roker Report,
I’ve been scanning the league table to familiarise myself with the various scenarios we could see play out in the promotion race, and one thing I noticed is that, at the time of writing, Leeds and Burnley are level on points going into the final two games.
How bothered do you think they are about achieving first place in the Championship?
I ask because Leeds are playing Bristol City this weekend, and Burnley have Millwall on the final day of the season, so even though they are already promoted, they still have a lot of influence over who will be in the playoffs come full-time on Saturday, 3 May.
Curious to know how you think they will approach these final two games.
Thank you.
Jack Asbery
Ed’s Note [Gav]: Morning Jack. They’ll both want to win the league now, definitely. Put yourself in their shoes — if that was Sunderland, what would you want us to do? That isn’t necessarily a good thing for us, as I’d much rather play Bristol City over two legs than I would Coventry, so we could do with Leeds doing us a favour and taking it lightly on Liam Manning’s side! Interestingly, Burnley have an away game at QPR on Saturday which is a 12:30 kick off, and given that QPR have nowt to play for and are in managerial turmoil I’d expect them to roll over and have their bellies tickled… Leeds don’t play until Monday night against Bristol City, so that likely means Burnley will spend a few days on top of the table at least and that will crank up the pressure at Elland Road.
If, presuming they both win this weekend, that means the final games are definitive in who wins the division, that doesn’t give me much hope of getting a favour out of Burnley when they play Millwall — who, again, I’d much rather play than Coventry.
Cheers for bringing all of this to my attention as I hadn’t realised so much was riding on the remaining games at the top end of the table!
Photo by Alex Livesey/Getty Images
Dear Roker Report,
First time emailing, and I was speaking to a few friends, and I must admit Le Bris last season was unknown to me due to the French league not being as prominent as others.
I don’t know if you agree, but with nothing left to play for realistically – we are finishing where we are – the team on Friday smashed it.
Had Hume not been sent off, we’d likely have won or drawn. On another note, everyone keeps going on about Rigg, Bellingham, and Neil (rightly so) being worth so much, but there are ballers all over the pitch.
Trai Hume is player of the season in my opinion – he’s been class.
Michael Scott
Ed’s Note [Gav]: I think the lads did themselves no harm on Friday, so I’d agree – it played out about as well as we could have hoped, all things considered. Given I think we need to avoid Coventry, Bristol City getting three points wasn’t the end of the world, and we came out of it all with no new injuries, and with a perfectly valid excuse for losing. We generally played well and I thought we held them at arm’s length for the mostpart. Yes, we lost, but I didn’t really care and think we did pretty well.
On Trai Hume — he’s had an absolutely superb season. he’s always been a good defender but he’s started adding goals and assists to his game too, which is all that was really missing. He’s a Premier League player in waiting and I’ll be amazed if he’s not subject to serious interest in the summer. If he was Brazilian and not Northern Irish we’d be talking about a £30m-£40m full back — I think he’s genuinely that good!
Photo by Stephen White – CameraSport via Getty Images