Championship play-off final preview...

Our resident columnist, Dan Thomas returns to give his view on the exciting Championship play-off final between Reading and Swansea...

The *insert obscene amount of money* match

It's approaching the end of May, so that can mean only one thing.

No, not Platini's braindead scheme of playing the Champions League final on a Saturday, it's the playoff bank holiday weekend extravaganza!

This pundit, with all the accuracy of Paul Merson, predicted a Nottingham Forest vs. Reading playoff final. Well, I was half right, so I suppose that gives me a higher percentage rate than Paul "Fernando Torres will score more goals than Andy Carroll and Luis Suarez combined" Merson when you think about it. Which he rarely does. Generally, because he's incapable of it. I've digressed haven't I?

The final is the Bank Holiday Monday showpiece, which has, according to the Sky Sports hype machine, usurped the Champions League final to become THE RICHEST GAME IN THE WORLD ™. I honestly don't know the figures. It used to be £70m, I remember that, but seemingly this is now worth £90m to either Reading or Swansea City.

After a good break of nearly two weeks, both teams will be ready for the final physically, but mental preparation is a different matter altogether. Good teams often crumble in the heat of the spotlight at Wembley as Sky drool over the possibility of *insert minnows* getting the roadmaps out for trips to *insert stadium* next season. They are seriously high pressure situations though and I wouldn't want to know how losing feels.

But either the Swans or the Royals will have to endure the pain. Swansea had a fair share of luck in their pulsating tie with Forest, but they deserve an enormous amount of credit for playing the whole of the first leg effectively with 10 men. To last out that long is truly outstanding work. And it's not like they just sat back either, they were a threat on the counter.

Reading ended up with a 3-0 win in the second leg in Cardiff, where they managed to win with relative ease after a bit of a helping hand from resident incompetent Howard Webb and a lot of a helping hand from Steven Bywater, whose catastrophic error allowed Shane Long to score from nothing, from which Cardiff never recovered.

I'm going to get splinters again, but I am finding it really hard to divide these two. Swansea have played some great football, and although their nerves went when Forest pulled it back to 2-1, they got home. Reading had it comfortable against a Cardiff team that had run out of steam at the wrong time. Again.

I'm tempted to call Swansea as the winners, but Reading have shown great resiliance to get into the playoffs at all after a brilliant winning streak at the business end of the season. I can see extra time, if not penalties (or, for the benefit of Chris Waddle, pelanties) but I think that the Swans, who have been there or thereabouts all season, have got just enough presence about them. In Scott Sinclair they have arguably the division's outstanding player and the wide Wembley pitch will suit their game down to the ground.

Reading however have a lot of firepower in the person of Shane Long, another of the division's top footballers. There is an argument that he'll be playing in the Premier League next season no matter what, with reports of some of the bigger fish in the Premiership (and Everton) casting their eyes over his performances.

Either way, the winner will be dancing around Wembley (seeing as it's after his precious Wembley showpiece, Platini doesn't care about the state of the pitch afterwards, the parasite) and for that they are lucky - as I've already had a less than sly dig about, the League One and Two playoffs are at Old Trafford because Platini has placed an exclusion zone around Wembley. Maybe my flight to Mallorca in just under 2 weeks will be cancelled due to this no fly zone as opposed to any brought about by volcanic ash. I think it is, to coin the words of another Frenchman, "criminal" that the League One and Two teams get a big day out at Old Trafford as opposed to Wembley. But Platini and his crumby organisation only care about one thing - dough, dosh, conkers, l'argon, Benjamins, greens, cash, money. But I digress.

Whether it's Swansea or Reading, the winner will have a difficult task in staying up next season, but with two hungry managers, they are already well equipped for the task. With sleek, modern stadia, both teams will make a welcome addition to the "best league in the world." Which it patently isn't, but that's another article for another time.

The playoffs are always a dramatic, epic series of football matches and after the high drama of the Swansea-Forest game, I expect no different this time. Let's just hope the pitch is ok, eh?

- DT