Brentford, Bournemouth, Swansea, Barnsley – which team is going up?

So with Norwich City and Watford already planning their trips in the Premier League next season we are left with a rare occurrence of two more games to play but the four sides who will compete in the play offs already known.

Brentford, Bournemouth, Swansea and Barnsley all achieved that goal at the weekend and now each can look at the league table this morning safe in the knowledge that nothing over the course of the next two weeks can take that play off position away from them.

The four teams are – incredibly – separated by just one point going into the last two weeks of the season although 3rd placed Brentford do have a game in hand.   Along with Bournemouth they have a superior goal difference to both Swansea and Barnsley by some distance which will be worth an extra point all but when the final positions are set.

We know the play off format 3rd faces 6th and 4th faces 5th with the highest team at home in the second leg – none of this is new news and already talk amongst the fanbase is who they would rather play and which game is “easier”

You will find many Swans fans almost assuming that we are the easiest side and everyone will want to face us but the league table never lies at this stage of the season and we will take our place amongst the play offs because we have been as good as them over the course of the season, current form can mean very little when it comes to the play offs.

One of the big differences this year is that none of the sides have just missed out on automatic promotion.  It has often been suggested that one side will head into the play offs having squandered a chance on the last day of the season but that is simply not the case as Norwich and Watford have pulled away.

There will be determination in each of the camps to secure the final place in the Premier League for next season but – despite our recent form – I think this is a wide open race and any side is capable of winning it, it is simply a case of producing their best performances over three games.

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One of the questions is what the next two weeks will show us.   The obvious answer is of course the final league positions which will be determined by the results but it will also be interesting to see what the four managers do in terms of their squad and how much they use the remaining matches to fine tune their tactics and selections ahead of the play offs starting in three weeks time.

Who would I prefer to see the Swans face?  I am not sure I have a preference.  Instinctively I want to say Barnsley but for no reason other than it “sounds” the easiest of the three possible semi finals and I think because I would want to avoid Bournemouth or Brentford.   So therefore the answer has to be Barnsley but appreciating that each of the games we could play are as difficult as each other.

And to echo the words of Steve Cooper after yesterday’s game “We are happy to be in there in the play-offs, we are satisfied, but we want more than we had last season.

“This club has had big moments, it has been in the Premier League, it has won a major honour and played in Europe, so I don’t want our ambition as a club to be that getting in the play-offs is an achievement.”

Let the play off fever begin