{"id":126563,"date":"2025-05-24T00:00:17","date_gmt":"2025-05-24T00:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/126563\/"},"modified":"2025-05-24T00:00:17","modified_gmt":"2025-05-24T00:00:17","slug":"championship-play-off-final-sheffield-united-hero-keith-gillespie-backs-blades-but-sees-northern-ireland-benefit-if-sunderland-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/126563\/","title":{"rendered":"Championship Play-Off Final: Sheffield United hero Keith Gillespie backs Blades but sees Northern Ireland benefit if Sunderland win"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Northern Ireland hero Keith Gillespie is backing former club Sheffield United in the Play-Off Final\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Keith_Gillespie.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_caption1 beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_secondary beltel-66f0fec7_regular beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom0 beltel-1d70522a_marginleft0 beltel-1d70522a_marginright0 beltel-1d70522a_margintop3 beltel-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Northern Ireland hero Keith Gillespie is backing former club Sheffield United in the Play-Off Final<\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_paragraph beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_primary beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom0 beltel-1d70522a_margintop0 beltel-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">It\u2019s dubbed the richest game in football, with the winners of Saturday\u2019s Championship Play-Off Final at Wembley set to land \u00a3250million! So, who comes out on top? Sheffield United or Sunderland?<\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_paragraph beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_primary beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom0 beltel-1d70522a_margintop0 beltel-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Former Northern Ireland hero Keith Gillespie wants to see his old club Sheffield United make it into the Premier League though, on the flip side, admits a Sunderland victory would benefit the national team due to Trai Hume and Dan Ballard being influential figures for the North East outfit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Northern Ireland hero Keith Gillespie is backing former club Sheffield United in the Play-Off Final It\u2019s dubbed the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":126564,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8817],"tags":[748,393,4884,8538,101,1620,30649,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-126563","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sheffield","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-northern-ireland-football-team","12":"tag-premier-league","13":"tag-sheffield","14":"tag-steven-beacom","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114559872116621933","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126563\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/126564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}