NTT20.COM predicts: Championship play-offs

Seven teams have two games to fight for two play-offs places - NTT20 staff writers make their predictions.

From Chernobyl to The Simpsons, Breaking Bad to Fawlty Towers, the greatest TV dramas and most enduring sitcoms have one specific thing deliberately missing from the action. If this component were added, the show would be far less compelling – in fact, it’d just be dull. Your protagonists cannot have this single, simple attribute. There must never be general competence.

In the last Championship matchday, while four of the bottom six won and two drew with each other, the clubs who started the day in 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th all lost. To remind: these are the division’s good teams. Yet, between them, this hapless half-dozen of hopefuls scored 5 goals and conceded 14 as every single one of them tasted chocolatey defeat on Easter Monday.

We live for this. Nobody wants a top-six battle in which everybody’s flying into the final weeks in rampant form. The whole point of a play-off club’s season is that they’re good without quite being elite. These are the Europa League challengers, hoping to win a place in the Champions/Premier League, and in their very nature they are fallible. In a way, it’s frustrating to watch precisely because it’s so relatable.

But those moments of slapstick wouldn’t slap without the high highs, either, and every team chasing those two available play-off places have had moments of sheer quality. They didn’t crack the top 10 by accident. There are no parachute payment teams here.

We’ve assessed the chances of each contender, looking at their final fixtures. Who’s going to meet Sheffield United and Sunderland in the play-offs? Grab some popcorn and find out.

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As it stands

Source: SoccerStats

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5️⃣ Bristol City [67pts] - Leeds (A), Preston (H)

Ali Maxwell

Leeds away is the toughest fixture in the division, while Preston at home is perhaps the kindest right now. One win secures Bristol City’s play-off spot. The Leeds game is on Monday night, so the weekend results of Coventry, Middlesbrough, Millwall and Blackburn Rovers will dictate whether City travel north feeling secure or jumpy. Whatever happens at Elland Road, the Robins have been tucking away bottom-half sides at home (W7 D4 L0) and so I trust them to get the job done against a spiralling North End side if needed.