Championship playoff predictions: Bees ready to seize their chance

Free football tips, best bets and analysis for the Championship playoffs which start on Monday, May 17.

Best bet

Brentford to be promoted
3pts 7-4 Hills

Playoffs preview

Brentford hold the record for playoff failures with nine unsuccessful attempts but their frustrations could come to an end with promotion to the Premier League.

Losing 2-1 to Fulham in last season's playoff final was the latest bitter pill to swallow for Thomas Frank's side, who had less than six weeks to dust themselves down and be ready for the start of the 2020-21 campaign.

But they won 87 points and finished closer to second-placed Watford – four points adrift - than playoff rivals Swansea, Barnsley and Bournemouth, who registered tallies of 80, 78 and 77.

There were missed opportunities for the Bees – including a sequence of four successive draws between mid-March and early April - which allowed Watford to usurp them in the race for automatic promotion.

But the Londoners improved on last season's total of 83 and that was despite the difficulty of losing two parts of their BMW forward line – Said Benrahma and Ollie Watkins – who moved to West Ham and Aston Villa.

Replacing such a talented duo presented a huge challenge but Brentford answered it with the signing of Ivan Toney, who quickly established himself as the most feared striker in the division.

Toney handled the step up from third-tier football with ease - contributing 31 goals and ten assists – and was the key reason why Brentford were the Championship's highest scorers.

While Brentford can look back on the regular season with a lot of satisfaction, their playoff semi-final opponents Bournemouth may have a few regrets, having failed to get close to their target of automatic promotion.

The Cherries had to absorb the departure of goalkeeper Aaron Ramsdale, defender Nathan Ake, plus attackers Ryan Fraser and Callum Wilson but retained the bulk of their squad and would have hoped to deliver a stronger challenge to Norwich and Watford, who finished below them in the Premier League the season before.

A change of manager did the trick for a while, with Jonathan Woodgate presiding over a seven-game winning sequence between March and April, but Bournemouth finished off with three successive defeats to leave them facing the most difficult of semi-finals.

They lost twice to Brentford in the regular season – 2-1 in West London and 1-0 on the south coast – and will need to find a lot of improvement to reach Wembley.

Brentford fully deserve their semi-finals favourites tag but the other two-legged affair between Barnsley and Swansea looks finely balanced.

Swansea had the edge in the league games, winning 2-0 on both occasions, but the last of those matches at Oakwell in January came before the stage of the season when Barnsley's results took off.

The Tykes picked up 42 points from the start of February – only Norwich and Watford fared marginally better – and did so with a direct, energetic style of football which proved difficult to play against.

Few second-tier teams have made better use of the increase in substitutes from three to five and the Tykes are not weighed down by the expectation of some of their rivals.

Swansea were far less convincing towards the end of the season, taking 11 points from their last 11 games, and will probably appreciate the eight-day gap between the end of the season and their playoff semi-final first leg at Oakwell.

However, they have the best defensive record of the playoff contenders having conceded 9 goals conceded and possess the dual threats of attackers Andre Ayew and Jamal Lowe, who have amassed league tallies of 16 and 14.

Swansea collected ten more points than last season, when they scraped into sixth place, so it's clear they are on the way up.

But the Swans were ousted by Brentford in last season's playoff semi-final, losing 3-2 on aggregate, and may struggle to reverse the outcome if they face the Bees in this season's final.

Brentford are carrying some mental baggage due to their Wembley heartache of just over nine months ago but it needn't stop them achieving their goal.

Dean Smith was in charge of the Aston Villa side who defeated Derby in the 2018-19 playoff final, 12 months on from the club's Wembley reverse to Fulham, and his feat could be repeated by his former employers, who can achieve top-flight status for the first time in more than 70 years.

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