Live Streaming of Brentford vs Swansea Championship Playoff on Sky Sports in UK & Ireland with Football VPN
It’s been called the Richest Game in Football because to the victor goes the spoils of close to £100mil in TV revenue in the first season in the Premier League. Failure to stay in the Premier League means parachute payments, success in maintaining Premier League status means a different way of life for your club. More money than you ever believed possible. Not just that TV money, but the matchday revenue goes up as ticket and concession prices get increased and then there’s the commercial deals. Life in the Premier League means a whole bunch of companies looking to get into business with you so they can advertise themselves on your shirt, your sleeve, your training kit, your training ground or simply the hoardings around your pitch.
This Saturday at 3.00pm, a proper time for such a match to kick-off, Brentford will look to become the 50th team to play in the Premier League when they take on Swansea City at Wembley. Swansea spent seven years in the Premier League after winning promotion under Brendan Rodgers in 2011 but were relegated in 2018 after a somewhat miraculous escape in 2017.
The Bees are the darling of the analytics community and have been praised for many years for their approach to recruitment. Ezri Konsa, Neal Maupay, Ollie Watkins, Said Benrahma and James Tarkowski are just some of the players they have signed, developed and sold for significant profit while simultaneously building themselves a team capable of competing for promotion. Star striker Ivan Toney was signed from Peterborough for £5mil in the summer to replace Watkins, sold to Villa for a profit of potentially £31mil. It’s believed that they have already fielded offers similar to the Watkins fee for Toney.
Their ability to continually identify talent, develop it and then make the best decisions for the club is something that many existing Premier League clubs should aspire to. Under owner Matthew Benham, they have risen from League One to back to back trips to the Championship Play-off final, while being sustainable, profitable and building a new stadium. Benham’s faith in analytics has been evident not just at Brentford, but also at FC Midtjylland of Denmark. An afterthought of Danish football when Benham bought them in 2014, now a three time Danish Champion and two time runner up who haven’t finished outside the top two in the past four seasons.
Benham, and Brentford, will be hoping they can go one step further than last year when they lost the playoff final to Fulham after overcoming none other than Swansea City in the semi-final. With Watkins leading the way, and a talented supporting cast of Bryan Mbeumo, Vitaly Janelt, Mathias Jensen and Marcus Forss, Thomas Frank has crafted a team capable of scoring goals for fun while retaining defensive solidity in their 3-5-2 system. The defense is anchored and directed by former Leeds star Pontus Jansson who will be desperate to join his former team-mates in the top flight.
Their opponents, Swansea City, are one of the best coached teams in the Championship having spent a season under Graham Potter before the last two under Steve Cooper. Cooper has been linked with the Crystal Palace job so he may well be in the Premier League next season regardless of the outcome, but there can be no doubt that he’d rather be in the top league as Swansea manager than elsewhere. Working around Swansea’s cashflow issues over the past two seasons, Cooper has exploited the loan market brilliant.
Chelsea’s Marc Guehi and Newcastle’s Freddie Woodman are both in their second seasons on loan with the Welsh side and they have become foundational pieces for Cooper’s side. Guehi is probably the best defender outside of the Premier League and if Chelsea don’t act quickly, they will end up missing out on a potentially top class young defender. His contract with Chelsea expires in 2022 and given their treatment of Fikayo Tomori, Guehi likely doesn’t have a long term future at the club. Woodman should feel unlucky to have been ignored for the England squad as he is a far more reliable goalkeeper than either Sam Johnstone or Aaron Ramsdale.
Swansea’s goal threat come from their wide attackers, Jamal Lowe and Andre Ajew, who grabbed 30 goals between them this season and who’s pace on the counter attack has been a massive weapon to Cooper’s men in games where they have less of the ball.
In Swansea’s 4-3-3 Cooper tends to be pragmatic in his team selections and tactical approaches but Woodman and Guehi have largely been mainstays for him, and for good reason. The battle between Guehi and Toney will likely be the deciding factor in this game and will result in either the 50th ever member of the Premier League, or a return to the top flight for one of it’s past members. It promises to be an excellent game between two well-coached teams who have strength throughout the spine of their team. From a neutral’s point of view, it would be nice to see a new face enter the league but at the same time it’s hard to overlook how much Swansea brought to the league during their seven tenure.
With £100mil + on the line, it may well come down to which team has the stronger mentality. Who that is, we’ll find out Saturday.
How to get a Brentford vs Swansea match?
Saturday’s match will be shown live on Sky Sports.
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