{"id":49254,"date":"2025-04-25T11:33:30","date_gmt":"2025-04-25T11:33:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/49254\/"},"modified":"2025-04-25T11:33:30","modified_gmt":"2025-04-25T11:33:30","slug":"fan-letters-how-much-of-a-say-will-leeds-burnley-have-in-who-sunderland-face-in-the-playoffs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/49254\/","title":{"rendered":"Fan Letters: How much of a say will Leeds & Burnley have in who Sunderland face in the playoffs?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dear Roker Report,<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve 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.<\/p>\n

How bothered do you think they are about achieving first place in the Championship?<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Curious to know how you think they will approach these final two games.<\/p>\n

Thank you.<\/p>\n

Jack Asbery<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

Ed\u2019s Note [Gav]: <\/strong>Morning Jack. They\u2019ll both want to win the league now, definitely. Put yourself in their shoes \u2014 if that was Sunderland, what would you want us to do? That isn\u2019t necessarily a good thing for us, as I\u2019d 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\u2019s 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\u2019d expect them to roll over and have their bellies tickled… Leeds don\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

If, presuming they both win this weekend, that means the final games are definitive in who wins the division, that doesn\u2019t give me much hope of getting a favour out of Burnley when they play Millwall \u2014 who, again, I\u2019d much rather play than Coventry.<\/p>\n

Cheers for bringing all of this to my attention as I hadn\u2019t realised so much was riding on the remaining games at the top end of the table!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"Burnley<\/p>\n

Photo by Alex Livesey\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Dear Roker Report,<\/strong><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know if you agree, but with nothing left to play for realistically – we are finishing where we are – the team on Friday smashed it.<\/p>\n

Had Hume not been sent off, we\u2019d 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. <\/p>\n

Trai Hume is player of the season in my opinion – he\u2019s been class.<\/p>\n

Michael Scott<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

Ed\u2019s Note [Gav]: <\/strong>I think the lads did themselves no harm on Friday, so I\u2019d 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\u2019t 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\u2019s length for the mostpart. Yes, we lost, but I didn\u2019t really care and think we did pretty well.\ufeff<\/p>\n

On Trai Hume \u2014 he\u2019s had an absolutely superb season. he\u2019s always been a good defender but he\u2019s started adding goals and assists to his game too, which is all that was really missing. He\u2019s a Premier League player in waiting and I\u2019ll be amazed if he\u2019s not subject to serious interest in the summer. If he was Brazilian and not Northern Irish we\u2019d be talking about a \u00a330m-\u00a340m full back \u2014 I think he\u2019s genuinely that good!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"Coventry<\/p>\n

Photo by Stephen White – CameraSport via Getty Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dear Roker Report, I\u2019ve been scanning the league table to familiarise myself with the various scenarios we could…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":49255,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8814],"tags":[14040,748,9029,393,26660,26658,26662,163,4884,7766,9984,256,1860,6329,22128,3577,26661,2963,2962,26659,2958,5598,16,15,13417,9985],"class_list":{"0":"post-49254","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-leeds","8":"tag-a","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-burnley","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-face","13":"tag-fan","14":"tag-fan-letters","15":"tag-front-page","16":"tag-great-britain","17":"tag-have","18":"tag-how","19":"tag-in","20":"tag-leeds","21":"tag-letters","22":"tag-much","23":"tag-of","24":"tag-playoffs","25":"tag-report","26":"tag-roker","27":"tag-say","28":"tag-sunderland","29":"tag-the","30":"tag-uk","31":"tag-united-kingdom","32":"tag-who","33":"tag-will"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114398390144835479","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49254","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=49254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49254\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}