{"id":99939,"date":"2025-05-14T05:11:10","date_gmt":"2025-05-14T05:11:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/99939\/"},"modified":"2025-05-14T05:11:10","modified_gmt":"2025-05-14T05:11:10","slug":"sheff-utd-to-meet-sunderland-in-championship-playoff-final","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/99939\/","title":{"rendered":"Sheff Utd to meet Sunderland in Championship playoff final"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sunderland will face Sheffield United in the Championship playoff final following a dramatic extra-time win over Coventry City tonight.<\/p>\n

The Black Cats join the Blades at Wembley Stadium on Saturday 24 May to determine which side will win a coveted place in the Premier League next season.<\/p>\n

Both Leeds United and Burnley already secured their top-flight return by earning the two automatic promotion spots, and they will be joined by either Chris Wilder<\/a>‘s Blades or <\/strong>Regis Le Bris’ Black Cats.<\/p>\n

Sheff Utd were the first team to confirm their place in the final with a thumping 6-0 aggregate victory over Bristol City, winning 3-0 in each leg of the semi-final.<\/p>\n

The Blades’ victory means that the team who finished third in the regular season have progressed to the Championship playoff final in nine of the past 10 seasons.<\/p>\n

Sheff Utd are targeting an immediate return to the Premier League after suffering relegation from the top division in 2023\/24, finishing bottom with 16 points and conceding 104 goals, the most in a single season in the competition’s history.<\/p>\n

\"Sunderland\"\/<\/p>\n

Sunderland booked their place at Wembley with a 3-2 aggregate win over Coventry City, following up a 2-1 first-leg away victory with a 2-1 win after defender Dan Ballard’s dramatic header in the final seconds of extra-time Stadium of Light on Tuesday night.<\/p>\n

The Black Cats, who drew a crowd of over 48,000 for their home tie, are no strangers to the playoffs – this is the fifth time in the last seven seasons, and their ninth overall.<\/p>\n

However, only one of their previous attempts has ended in promotion, with Alex Neil leading them to the Championship in 2022, thanks to a 2-0 win over Wycombe Wanderers.<\/p>\n

The last time Sunderland reached the Championship playoff final was in May 2019, when they faced Charlton Athletic in arguably one of the greatest-ever finals – an epic 4-4 draw after extra-time that Charlton edged 7-6 in a dramatic sudden-death penalty shootout.<\/p>\n

Sunderland have not graced the top flight since 2016\/17 when their relegation to the second tier ended 10 successive seasons in the Premier League, finishing bottom of the table with 24 points.<\/p>\n

Playoff finalist stats<\/p>\n

In total, 45 per cent of playoff winners have come from the team finishing third, with nine out of 20.<\/p>\n

Sheff Utd have failed in all nine of their previous playoff campaigns and are yet to score in any of their four playoff finals to date.<\/p>\n

Sunderland (59) edge Sheff Utd (51) in terms of wins from their 134 previous league meetings, but the Blades’ hold the upper hand in recent seasons, claiming six victories from their last eight Championship encounters.<\/p>\n

When will clubs officially join Premier League?<\/p>\n

Leeds and Burnley, along with the winner of the Championship playoff final, will be formally confirmed as Premier League clubs at the Premier League’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) this summer, when they are both issued with a share certificate.<\/p>\n

Their supporters will find out who they will face first in the 2025\/26 season, due to start on 16 August, when the fixtures are released at 09:00 BST on Wednesday 18 June.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sunderland will face Sheffield United in the Championship playoff final following a dramatic extra-time win over Coventry City…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":99940,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[748,393,4884,12,1144,712,661,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-99939","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-northern-ireland","13":"tag-scotland","14":"tag-text","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom","17":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114504471959375302","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99939","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=99939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99939\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}