Sunderland fans would have been fearing the worst when the Wearside club had only amassed 11 points from 13 games in the Premier League and were sitting at a dismal 16th after a disappointing 2-1 loss at home to bottom side Wigan. With these results Steve Bruce became Managerial causality number one.

With frustration growing now was time for radical changes. On the 3rd of December Sunderland unveiled their new manager, boyhood fan, Martin O’Neill. The ex-Aston Villa manager had a great reputation for building spirited teams at Leicester, Celtic and recently Aston Villa. Now, after 12 games at the helm, he has lifted his side to 8th on the table with 33 points and into the Fourth round of the F.A Cup. O’Neill’s record speaks for itself with 8 wins, 2 draws and 2 losses. The most notable of these coming against league leaders Manchester City at the stadium of Light when summer signing Dong-Wong Ji scored in the dying seconds to give Sunderland a famous 1-0 win.

The Northern Irishman’s players are full of praise for the way their new manager has boosted their confidence. James McClean, the exciting young left winger bought from Derry City by Bruce, who had appeared to have been forgotten about until O’Neill threw him into the first team, describes the change. “The new manager’s lifted everyone around the club,” the £350,000 signing says. “He’s given us a new lease of life. He’s a remarkable man.”

The 59-year-old has also been hailed for his man-management skills. Suddenly Lee Cattermole, the less than innocent captain, resembles the midfielder Liverpool once sought after, rather than a bad-tackling, booking prone liability. “The gaffer has taken all the players to one side, put his arm round each of us and made us feel good about ourselves again,” says Cattermole. “He’s very intelligent and passionate”. Another player who has been pivotal under O’Neill is the gifted attacking midfielder, Stephane Sessegnon. The ex-PSG man is someone O’Neill and his assistant, Steve Walford, hone in training.

With this being said, most Sunderland supporters are wondering how O’Neill could have handled the Asamoah Gyan situation. A player last season who dazzled and danced his way into the hearts of the Sunderland faithful, before he abruptly left on a season-long loan spell at UAE club Al Ain at the start of this year’s campaign, when Bruce was in charge. With reports claiming he’s ruled out a return to the Black Cats, the Wearside club’s fans believe their new gaffer can convince Gyan otherwise.

Being big on loyalty, he hopes his players will repay him by raising their collective bar. A manager who says that his long-term goal is to see Sunderland performing in the manner of Barcelona re-assesses Bruce’s allegation that Wearside fans are unrealistically demanding, reinforcing his faith in the squad. “I don’t have a problem with expectations,” he says, firmly. “A club of Sunderland’s calibre should have ambition.”

In Martin O’Neill, Sunderland has a determined and efficient manager who’s brought a new spirit to the club, someone who’s ready to endear himself into the hearts of all Sunderland fans and most of all a manager who has strong ambitions for the future.

  Hull City boss Phil Brown celebrates his sides play-off victory at Wembley in 2008.

As the Championship football season reaches a crescendo of excitement, supporters of many clubs up & down the country must be looking at their OWN clubs current plight, & thinking not where they want to finish, (we all want our own team to finish top!) but more to the point whether where they do finally finish is considered an acceptable, realistic, reasonable, honest reflection of their season come the end of next week.

I am, as it happens just one of those fans! My Club, Crystal Palace (a club I support with a passion) are currently mid-table in the Championship, have not got a proverbial pot to piss in financially, due mainly to an over-sized squad of mediocre players with limited ability on impermeable contracts, (that we are unable to shift even if we had tried to offload them at a Sunday morning boot fair), along with its fair share of internal wrangling.

I am not using this as a platform for slinging mud or lambasting my own Club, as I am well aware that quite a few football clubs are in similar situations, due in part to the current financial climate. I digress…………where was I, the play-offs.

This season the Championship had for the most part been dominated by three clubs, Wolves, Birmingham & Reading, basically leaving the rest of the league to scrap it out for the remaining three places that would secure a play-off spot, & the potentially lucrative opportunity to reach the ‘promised land’ of the Premier League. However with various twists & turns of late, we enter the final week of the season knowing only Wolves are guaranteed Premier League football next season.

Promotion would generate an estimated cash injection of £30million plus to each of the successful teams, depending on what one chooses to utilize as their source of information.

This Championship season boasts a number of low, medium & high profile clubs namely  Sheffield United, Birmingham & Reading jostling for the one remaining automatic promotion spot, with Cardiff, Burnley & Preston battling to make up the remaining play-off places.

The play-offs were introduced in 1986/87, so there have been 21 previous years of reasons for supporters to shed tears & joy or despair at some point since the late 1980’s. Martin Lange was the man responsible for the end-of-season extravaganza. Lange saw promotion play-offs as a means of rekindling supporter interest in the lower divisions, thereby bringing the clubs much-needed extra income.

The play-offs remain with us today because they have met, and arguably exceeded their expectations. Since their introduction attendances across the lower three divisions have more than doubled. It is hard to argue that Lange’s innovation has been at least partly responsible for such a dramatic increase. Supporters have accepted the play-offs with a mixture of enthusiasm & interpretation.

The matches themselves invariably produce extraordinary levels of drama, incredible scorelines & the reason for this has in part been due to an astonishing number of crucial late goals! Of course, a sudden-death contest determining a club’s fate for the whole of the season inevitably leads to heightened emotions, the fall-out from which has given plenty of ammunition to opponents of the system.

In the Championship play-offs the disappointment has been greatest for Preston & Ipswich, with a record six unsuccessful attempts each. No other clubs have tackled the play-offs so often, so unsuccessfully!

Crystal Palace though, are the undisputed play-off masters. Palace have one of the best overall records in the play-offs, with three victories, a losing final and two losing semi-finals. And all of them were for a place in the top division.

In the first two seasons the play-offs were introduced, the third to fifth sides from what was then the ‘old’ Division 2 competed with the fourth from bottom side in the ‘old’ Division 1.

In most other seasons the play-offs were for the third to sixth placed sides, but in both 1990/91 and 1994/95 this was different due to League restructuring. In the first of those years the fourth to seventh sides took part whilst in 1994/95 it was the second to fifth sides. Ignoring those first two seasons when the format was significantly different, the winners of the play-off final in the other 19 seasons have been:

Highest placed club – 6 times.

Second highest placed club – 4 times.

Third highest placed club – 5 times.

Lowest placed club – 4 times.

 These statistics simply emphasise the fact that there is no real benefit in finishing in a higher League position. Of the six teams in total that have finished third in the league and were promoted via the play-offs to the top flight, three of those teams have been in the last three consecutive seasons, namely Watford, Derby & Hull.

For the record in 1989/90 the winners at Wembley were not actually promoted. Although Swindon Town beat Sunderland in the final, it was the losing side who were eventually promoted after Swindon were punished for financial irregularities.

This season’s Play-Off dates:

Now I am well aware that neither you nor I (the man in the street) can do anything about the weather itself, but maybe the Clubs outside the Premier League should look at alternative strategies in an attempt to make sure games are played despite the weather.

In the cold light of day the Premier League is in a world of its own, The Royal Family of the Football League if you like, BUT the foundation, the bread and butter of our game emanates from the lower leagues.

The Championship, the second tier of our national  game is susceptible to the same problems and issues as the Blue Square League when games are called off.
Lost revenue through various channels including television rights, match sponsorship and ticket sales, match re-scheduling, administration costs, disruption and disappointment for the fans and general inconvenience.

For example, Crystal Palace were due to meet Plymouth Argyle at Home Park on Saturday 10th January, the match was postponed and is now re-scheduled for Tuesday 17th February .
How feasible and fair is it on the modern day fan to even contemplate a 460 mile round-trip from London, a nine-hour vehicle journey in MIDWEEK, and in the current economic climate!

A day off work, traveling costs, the long trip, returning home in the early hours and getting up for work the very same morning. Preposterous!
However the tenacity of some of our supporters (as with many Clubs) means there will without a doubt be a small representation of Palace fans at Home Park next week but obviously nothing like the vocal support OUR team would have received had the game been on the proposed Saturday.

This Saturday is FA Cup weekend, and with both teams are out of the competition, in theory anyway both Clubs were available to fulfill the fixture on this ‘free’ weekend, but for whatever reason it seems football politics got in the way. 

I stand to be corrected and will happily hold my hands up if I am wrong, but I thought the re-scheduling of postponed fixtures took priority wherever possible. Palace’s last two fixtures against Birmingham and Barnsley respectively were both victims of the weather. Meanwhile this Saturday Charlton play host to Plymouth, whilst Birmingham entertain Forest.  Both Barnsley and Palace will be kicking their heals this weekend, as neither of them have a game!  

I assume  a week is not enough time for two professional clubs and the FA to re-schedule a fixture! Galling and irksome are just two adjectives that immediately spring to mind.

Now the proposed solution………….of all the various gimmicks in British Football over the years the plastic or artificial pitch is possibly the least bemoaned.
Considered an avant-garde remedy to the rain, frost and snow of a British winter, as well as an additional form of income on non-match days by staging an assortment of other activities to raise money, the plastic football pitch was originally modelled on the Astroturf surfaces of the USA in the 1960’s.

The first football club to roll out a synthetic pitch on these shores was QPR at their Loftus Road ground in 1981. Luton, Oldham and Preston followed suit, but shortly after 1994 when Deepdale reverted back to the green green grass of home, artificial pitches were outlawed under Premier League guidelines.

At the time these pitches were in the early development stage and admittedly there were issues revolving around the bounce of the ball, carpet-type burns and the potential damage to joints, (in particular those of the knee) due to the overly unforgiving nature of the hard surface.
However times and science have moved on quite considerably, 25 years on in fact since the initial experiment at Loftus Road.

Under-soil heating and better drainage facilities also contributed to the death of the artificial pitch, BUT the fact remains today that currently the lushest of footballing surfaces are often made out of a combination of artificial fibres to toughen up the traditional ‘live’ grass alongside it!

In 2003 at the Under-17 World Cup Championships in Helsinki, ten of the matches including the final were played on one of the new generation of artificial surfaces.

Furthermore many of the ultra-modern stadiums in Britain have such high-sided stands that they block out the natural elements that are needed for the turf to be at its best. Subsequently this results in pitches having to be re-laid during a season at great expense, suggesting that an artificial surface of sufficient quality could have a place in the game, particularly outside the top flight.

A full international fixture for the 2008 European Championships was played in October 2007 between England and Russia on an artificial surface, which was installed to counteract adverse weather conditions, at the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow.
In Scotland last month Alloa Athletic hosted Aberdeen on their plastic pitch for a Scottish Cup game. 

Is it not finally time that the people at the apex of our game, in their shiny suits, moccasin shoes and badly dyed hair, took the bull by the horns and instead of  watching football clubs fall foul of the weather, became pro-active and provided lower league clubs in the British domestic game, with at least the option of using the latest technology in the form of ‘3G’ type plastic pitches?