Lying on the sofa yesterday, I spent a restful couple of hours flicking between the coverage of the Monaco Grand Prix and the EFL Championship Play-Off Final.
The former was just a procession with Charles LeClerc taking the honours, the second was, to be honest just a little more exciting, but not much!
It doesn’t seem a year ago that the Hatters were thrilling the viewers with a penalty shoot-out win, against Coventry, time really does fly.
Yesterday, Southampton beat Leeds United 1-0, with the latter not showing the enterprising football that almost saw them gatecrash the automatic promotion places, perhaps over-awed by the intensity of the occasion.
In achieving promotion, Southampton made an immediate return to the Premier League, something we are all hoping we can achieve in the forthcoming 2024/2025 season.
Indeed, I’d like to wish all the promoted teams well, Leicester City, Ipswich Town and Southampton have all made the promised land and the inherent wealth will be welcomed by all three clubs.
But it is interesting to see that two of the three clubs, Ipswich Town and Leicester City, could lose the very managers that took them to the pinnacle of domestic football with ‘bigger’clubs sizing up snatching them away.
Last season, the three clubs promoted from the EFL Championship in the 2022/2023 season, Burnley, Sheffield United and Luton Town, made an immediate return to the EFL Championship, accumulating a record, between them, low points total since the inception of the Premier League.
Will their replacements in the top-flight of English football fare any better?
Do they chase survival by spending big or do they do a Luton Town and try their utmost to retain their Premier League status by spending well within their means, I’m sure we will find out during the summer months!
Leave a Reply