Aston Villa need to beat Fulham in playoff final

The ‘£170m’ football match is upon us at 5pm today. Aston Villa take on Fulham in the Championship Playoff Final, where it’s winner takes all for a place in the ‘promise land’ of the Premier League. The game is billed to be the most lucrative in football, due to the huge financial reward on offer. And I for one, even having enjoyed the Championship, is now ready to get back to where Villa belong.

The implications of Villa not going up, look pretty dire. Villa are a bigger club than Fulham, and therefore it’s costs are much larger and if Villa don’t go up, we will see a huge cost cutting summer which will see certain star players move on. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. So let’s look at the match today.

There is no doubt that Villa have the players to beat Fulham, but we have been very Jekyll and Hyde this season, and it really depends which Villa turn up. If it’s the team that demolished Wolves then Fulham will be in for a rough afternoon, but with Villa being so inconsistent, and Fulham being a very good outfit, its a tough game to call. The bookies have it down as a Fulham win, and with them only losing a few times since December, its hard to argue with them.

Our Key man is likely to be Jack Grealish who missed the game at Craven Cottage earlier in the season. We missed him on that day and looked completely toothless in attack, we had 1 shot on target and lost by a comfortable 2-0 margin. Also, Mike Jedinak will be very important as he proved to be in both legs against Middlesbrough ten days ago. Fulham’s pace with Ryan Sessengon in particularly is frightening, so can Jedinak keep up the pace for 90mins? Time will tell.

Fulham’s manager has been talking up his team, whilst saying the Villa squad is ‘old and tired’, there is no doubt that he has done Steve Bruce’s team talk for him, and the players will be fully motivated for the game today.

This game is likely to be settled by a single goal, which way it will fall, is anyone’s guess. Fulham could have clinched 2nd place on the final day of the season, having been in 17th in November, so they are the form team, but Villa have big game players with huge experience, so its tightly poised.

I’m off to Wembley tomorrow, enjoy Vill fans!