Sky Bet Championship: Outright play-offs preview with best bets

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3pts Fulham to be promoted at 5/2

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Forget the Premier League; the Sky Bet Championship is the best league in the world.

We were again reminded of how brilliant England's second tier is following a huge night of drama across Wednesday's final fixtures. We went into the evening knowing that spots in automatic promotion, the play-offs and relegation were all available.

West Brom, Brentford and Fulham all failed to win as they aimed to secure second place. That meant that the Baggies returned to the Premier League and the two West London rivals will battle it out for promotion via the play-offs.

Sky Bet Championship play-off dates

Semi-finals

• Swansea v Brentford (18:30 - Sunday July 26)
• Cardiff v Fulham (19:45 - Monday July 27)
• Brentford v Swansea (19:45 - Wednesday July 29)
• Fulham v Cardiff (19:45 - Thursday July 30)

Final

• Wembley Stadium (19:45 - Tuesday August 4)

This preview should have included Nottingham Forest. Sabri Lamouchi's men looked certain for the play-offs but they failed to win any of their last six games. A defeat, combined with a Swansea win and a six-goal swing on final day, would have seen them drop out of the top-six altogether. They were 1/66 to finish in the play-offs; it shouldn't have happened; it did happen.

Forest's collapse was some source of 'joy' for Cardiff boss Neil Harris. The two clubs had fallen out following Forest's decision to recall Albert Adomah from his loan spell at their top-six rivals.

"Sabri Lamouchi was manager of the year in the Championship four weeks ago and finished seventh," Harris told the media after they beat Hull on final day. Cardiff are full of confidence and so they should.

Harris has guided Cardiff to the top-six and his work during his time at the club has somewhat gone under the radar. The table for the 30 games he has been in charge for has the Bluebirds sitting in fourth. The bad news? Fulham, their semi-final opponents, are third over the same period while Brentford are second.

All four teams involved have seen great results since the restart. The 'post-lockdown league' has Brentford in second, Cardiff third, Swansea fifth and Fulham sixth. The context of when the victories came potentially show that the table can be slightly deceptive.

Brentford's run of eight consecutive wins fired them into promotion contention but they finished the season on the back of two defeats. They would have fancied their chances of automatic promotion too given their form. Now, they need to find a way to respond through the play-offs.

So while the Bees are 6/4 favourites to win the post-season competition, those recent results have to be put into serious consideration. They became favourites for automatic promotion when West Brom lost to Huddersfield; they couldn't respond as they were beaten by Stoke the following day.

They've experienced two types of pressure during this run-in. The first type was the one they enjoyed of being the outsiders but involved in the chase. All expectations were on Leeds and West Brom and they could go about the job themselves without having to worry about a team being just behind them.

The other was the one where they took the favourites tag and they didn't cope with it well. That's the concern for Brentford here; they could be a side who enjoy playing the outsider rather than the team to be shot at. At such a short price across three fixtures of which two will likely need to end in victory - is it really worth backing them for success?

There's a strong argument to be made that they are the best of the four teams involved. They have a good balance throughout the squad and a prolific forward front line who have contributed 57 goals between them.

The problem is their form they carry into the play-offs. Their final three games brought one win and two defeats; for Fulham it was one win and two draws, Swansea's was two wins and a draw while Cardiff coasted home with three victories.

Based on what we witnessed over the final few games, would many people be rushing to back Brentford to secure promotion? That's not to say it won't happen, they have a chance like the other three teams, but that recent form is a big concern.

The problem they face as well is that quick turnaround for games. The usual scenario would give teams a week or so to prepare for the first leg, with the same applying between games as the season comes to its conclusion, but here they will be playing just four days later.

That fixture set-up is perfect for a team who are winning. Leeds had that and they won the title by ten points. Of course, Brentford enjoyed a winning run of their own but those two games, the ones that mattered the most, ended with them leaving empty-handed.

It's bad enough having to try and dust yourself down after missing out on automatic promotion, especially when they now know that a win would have done it, but to do that with just a few days between that and your next game? That is tough.

A short trip across West London takes us to Fulham and their 5/2 price on promotion is interesting - particularly when you factor in how they finished the season.

Their restart saw defeats to Brentford and Leeds, that seemed to have ended their hopes of automatic promotion, but they bounced back with five wins from seven afterwards.

The two draws came at West Brom, who of course finished second, and Wigan, who were battling relegation and have been in excellent form throughout the second-half of the season.

That run of results is made even more impressive by the fact they won their three games without Aleksandar Mitrovic - he received a three-game suspension for an early elbow on Ben White in that loss at Leeds. Mitrovic went on and won the Golden Boot award after finishing as the division's top goalscorer.

Just four games ago Fulham beat Cardiff 2-0 in comfortable fashion at Craven Cottage. Scott Parker's side posted an xG of 2.66 in that game; they were creating opportunities and finding the net. A repeat of that performance will surely see them reach Wembley after the two semi-finals.

Parker's post-match comments after their draw with Wigan were interesting. He didn't seem too disheartened by the fact that they missed out on a top-two finish despite dropped points for West Brom and Brentford.

"It’s not happened for us. I think we knew the job was well out of our hands tonight," he said. "I think we all understood the likelihood of where we were going was going to be the play-offs. That’s seven unbeaten now. We go into the play-offs now in-form, with momentum."

Momentum is key and Parker recognises that. When Fulham won the play-offs in 2018 they lost just one of their previous 24 fixtures. That may have come on final day but they ran into the three games on the back of some really good results.

The same can be said for Aston Villa last season. They won ten of their final 12 fixtures; a defeat on the final day to Norwich came because they made a number of changes to rest players ahead of the play-offs.

Hull in 2015/16 lost just one of their final six before winning at Wembley against Sheffield Wednesday. Norwich in the season before lost just one of their last eleven. Huddersfield are an anomaly to this rule; they struggled over the line and failed to win any of their play-off games with two penalty shootouts seeing them promoted. Those shootouts could have so easily gone the other way.

Essentially, history has shown us that teams generally struggle to succeed in the Championship play-offs when they have lost multiple games at the end of the season. The context is also important as some losses came with the teams knowing they would be involved in the play-offs anyway.

A look at the table over the last six games (a two-and-a-half week period in this season) gives Fulham the advantage. The Cottagers sit second in points gained over that period with no losses. Brentford and Cardiff both had two defeats; Swansea had one.

Fulham seem best equipped for the play-offs; five games that are set to continue the drama we've witnessed throughout the season in this division.

Play-off team mini-league

Using results from the games involving the four play-off teams this season

TEAM W D L PTS

1. Brentford | 5 | 1 | 0 | 16
2. Fulham | 3 | 1 | 2 | 10
3. Swansea | 1 | 1 | 4 | 4
4. Cardiff | 0 | 3 | 3 | 3

Post lockdown Sky Bet Championship table

Nine games since the season restarted in mid-June

TEAM W D L PTS

1. Leeds | 7 | 1 | 1 | 22
2. Brentford | 7 | 0 | 2 | 21
3. Cardiff | 6 | 1 | 2 | 19
4. Wigan | 5 | 3 | 1 | 18
5. Swansea | 5 | 2 | 2 | 17
6. Fulham | 5 | 2 | 2 | 17

Key Opta statistics

• Swansea enter the playoffs on the back of four wins in their last six Championship matches (D1 L1), as many victories as they managed in the 17 games beforehand.
• Only champions Leeds United (22) picked up more Championship points than Brentford (21) since the return of the competition in mid-June, though the Bees lost their last two regular season matches to finish third and two points behind promoted West Brom.
• Only one of the last five sides to finish third (and travel to sixth) in the first leg of the Championship playoffs has managed to win (D2 L2) – Leeds United winning 1-0 at Derby last season.
• Cardiff City have managed to win just one of their last 11 matches with Fulham in all competitions (D5 L5), a 4-2 win when both sides were in the Premier League in 2018-19.
• Fulham will enter the Championship playoffs for the third time in the last four seasons, losing out to Reading in the semi-finals in 2017, before earning promotion via this method in 2018 after beating Aston Villa at Wembley.
• Since their 0-3 defeat at Leeds back in June, Fulham finished the regular season with a seven-game unbeaten run (W5 D2) – their longest such run of the campaign.
• Fulham striker Aleksandar Mitrovic has finished the Championship campaign with the most number of goals (26); indeed, despite playing the entire 2018-19 campaign in the Premier League, only Jarrod Bowen (41) and Lewis Grabban (44) have scored more league goals in the second tier than the Serbian (38) since his debut for Fulham in February 2018.

What has been said?

Brentford's Thomas Frank: "Football is 80 per cent suffering and 10 per cent joy. When you have that opportunity to go direct to the Premier League, that is the emotional part of it – but Barnsley did a good job.

"Right now everything is tough but this is football and this is life. This was not straightforward. We can’t sit down and cry too long because that will never help anything.

"We need to go again and pick ourselves up. We will have a sleep and then be ready to fight again."

Fulham's Scott Parker: "Positive, a real positive because we were realistic and certainly the way we framed it was realistic.

"We knew what we had to do tonight and to bring the season to the last game was a massive positive for us. We took it to the wire, it's not happened for us, we knew it was well out of our hands tonight.

"We all understood it was likely we were going to the play-offs. We lost two games out of lockdown and since then we've been in very good form, that's seven unbeaten now. When you're close there's an element of 'can we do it' but you're relying on other teams to slip up."

Cardiff's Neil Harris: "It’s a huge achievement. Every bit of praise for the players and the staff has been earned.

"I came in as not a huge name and I had to prove myself, every week. The play-off (semi-finals) are about four halves of football and you need momentum.

"The message is clear. We get into the play-offs when everyone else is on holiday and that’s to win. No other reason. There is a bit of pressure on us, bit there is huge pressure on Fulham. We will go and enjoy it.

"I have been through six, four as a player and two as manager and I love it. It’s the best way to get promoted."

Swansea's Steve Cooper: "It was all a bit of a blur at the end. But we got over the line. We’re calm now and refocused. It’s a pat on the back at the moment but still not a time for congratulations.

"We’re there already, back down to earth. We’ve still got two or maybe three games to go. What an eventful night it was. We’ve got the job done in the end, we achieved our objective, but no one thought that it was going to be in that way.

"It was, though, going to take something extraordinary for it to happen. And it has done."

Odds correct at 1300 BST (24/07/20)

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