Why third often ends in tears

The mood was subdued at Turf Moor as Mick McCarthy shrugged off a victorious end to the league season proper and turned his attention to the play-offs.

‘We haven’t achieved anything yet, but it’s good to finish third,” said the Sunderland manager with a sigh. ‘We want to get promoted.”

If that was supposed to signal a bold rallying cry, recent history suggests it was more like whistling in the dark. The Wearsiders could yet buck the trend, but to finish immediately outside the automatic promotion places in the first division has generally meant one thing: the season will end in simmering frustration rather than celebratory elevation.

Since the one-off final was introduced to the play-offs in 1990, only three sides in 14 years have escaped the second tier having finished just outside the automatic places: Ipswich in 2000 and Bolton the following year, who both finished third, and Notts County, fourth in 1991 when three were promoted automatically.

Bruce Rioch’s Wanderers finished third and went up in 1995 too, though only one side — Middlesbrough — was promoted automatically that year, leaving second-placed Reading’s campaign engulfed in bitter disappointment.

The margin between third and fourth has been as wide as nine points at times, only to count for nothing. That chasm has gaped wider still between third and sixth, with the semifinals proving a cruel leveller. Wolves finished third in 2002 with 86 points but succumbed to distant sixth-placed Norwich, who had mustered only 75; Portsmouth (88) were flummoxed over two legs by Leicester (76) in 1993.

The failure to progress despite establishing clear, and occasionally massive, superiority over the course of the season might be attributed to a sense of deflation at missing out on automatic promotion.

It undermined Wolves two years ago, when their 10-point advantage over West Bromwich Albion was eroded with only two wins picked up in their final nine games. That wretched form duly dogged them into the knockout matches.

As the Baggies celebrated, Norwich saw Dave Jones’s side off in the semifinals.

‘Knowing what we’d let slip definitely ate away at us,” said the Wolves manager, who endured banners at Molineux reading ‘You let us down again” at the time. ‘It’s hard lifting yourselves again when you’ve been within touching distance of automatic promotion.”

Losing a battle to finish second has invariably demoralised promotion candidates. Regardless of finishing well clear of the rest of the pack, third-placed sides have carried a sense of failure with them that the likes of Ipswich in 1999 — they ended a point off promoted Bradford City but lost to Bolton, who had finished 10 points away, in the play-offs — and Crystal Palace three years earlier have failed to shrug off.

Dave Bassett’s Londoners had travelled to second-placed Derby that year in their penultimate league game, knowing a win would virtually guarantee them automatic promotion.

Instead they lost 2-1, finished third and succumbed to a 120th-minute goal by Leicester’s Steve Claridge in the final at Wembley.

‘That showed how cruel the play-offs can be,” said Bassett. ‘You sense you’re there and you’ve made it, then it’s snatched away from you just like that.”

Logic suggests success in the head-to-head depends on the momentum a side can generate entering the finale. Watford burst out of mid-table in 1999 with seven wins in their last eight matches, overcoming Birmingham in the semifinals and beating Bolton at Wembley. Likewise, Martin O’Neill’s Leicester won six out of eight before beating Palace in the 1996 final.

‘I don’t think momentum counts for anything,” argued the current Palace manager Iain Dowie, whose side, including a brief spell under Kit Symons, won 16 of their last 24 games to emerge from the first division relegation zone to earn a play-off with McCarthy’s team on Friday and Sunday.

‘Sunderland finished third and are therefore the third-best team in the league. They’ve been better than we have over the season, but the play-offs are nervous and edgy occasions.

‘It’s not about what happened getting you there from now on in. It’s about how you handle 180 minutes of pressure football. You’ve got to get over what’s happened, put it behind you and knuckle down to a one-off showdown.”

‘We should have finished in the top two but we shouldn’t fear anyone now,” said Sunderland striker Kevin Kyle. ‘People would have taken a third-placed finish at the start of the season, even if there are regrets now that we didn’t get an automatic place. We’re just going to have to do it the hard way.”

History suggests that much is true. —