Not content with prompting scenes of unbridledjubilation at Turf Moorby securing promotion to the Premier League after a one-year absence, Burnley’s win over Sheffield United also sparked similar, if less densely populated scenes of elation across t’Penninesin yonder Leeds. Sporting shades and busting the kind of moves you don’t often see in the formal surrounds of Elland Road’s Lorimer Suite, Largie Ramazani was still dressed in full kit almost three hours after the 6-0 slaughter of Stoke. He was also the conspicuous life and soul of a party in which his teammates could be seen whooping, hollering and popping champagne corks safe in the knowledge that Burnley’s blunting of the Blades confirmed they’d be returning to the top tier too. Inside one ground and outside another, the euphoria of players and fans of both teams knew no bounds.
And why would it? Having booked their places in next season’s Premier League, both clubs can now look forward to being installed as white-hot favourites to go straight back down again, while angrily dismissing the naysayers and coming up with a plan to help ensure they are not quite as bad as West Ham and two other teams. While Football Daily is prepared to concede that pouring buckets of ice-cold water over the respective parades of Burnley and Leeds fans less than a day after their teams have won promotion may smack of bah humbug curmudgeonliness, now the empty fizz bottles have been consigned to the recycling bins and the celebratory smoke bombs have dissipated, plenty of shrewdies in Burnley and Leeds will be examining the quite frankly dismal top-flight records of their respective managers and thinking the same. Whether or not those in the Turf Moor and Elland Road boardrooms are among them and heartless enough to pull the trigger sooner rather than later remains to be seen.
Following Sheffield United’s poorly-timed late season wobble, Chris Wilder’s hopes of returning to his lofty status – as a Premier League manager in front of whom post-match sandwich-eating by match officialsis frowned upon– are now pinned on the playoffs, where Sunderland are also guaranteed a spot. With just a couple of games to go, the other two places are currently occupied by Liam Manning’s Bristol City and Coventry, while Michael Carrick’s Middlesbrough and Alex Neil’s Millwall are also knocking on the door. At the bottom end of the table it’s also still all to play for, with four of the bottom six winning on Monday, among them the long-term basement-dwellers Plymouth doing a dogged impersonation of a floater that refuses to flush. Meanwhile in what some would have you believe is The Best League In The World™, the excitable babble is all about who will come fifth.
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