Saints hit jackpot as Leeds fail to escape play-off woe

After the expensive relegation, the lucrative promotion. Southampton contrived to finish bottom of the Premier League in a year when they spent some £160m, had three managers and only mustered six wins.

- RICHARD JOLLY

Leeds United 0

Southampton 1
A Armstrong (24)

They return to the world’s richest league courtesy of the world’s richest game, their prize for play-off victory probably beginning at £140m and, if they stay up, worth rather more. If Bobby Stokes, the hero of the 1976 FA Cup final, still has the most famous Wembley winner in Southampton’s history, Adam Armstrong has the most lucrative. For Leeds, consigned to another season in the Championship, it ranks as the most costly.

A sixth unsuccessful play-off campaign means they are still without a win at Wembley since 1992. On the 35th anniversary of Don Revie’s death, the Damned United remain incapable of escaping their past. There was another kind of unwanted sequel: a third defeat to Southampton this season, with Armstrong scoring in all three. There were times when Leeds looked like the finest team in the Championship but that trio of losses to Southampton means that, unlike Saints and Leicester, they have not rebounded to the top flight.

In the dugouts, the subplot started in Norfolk in 2017. For Russell Martin, the Norwich captain bombed out to train with the Under-23s seven years ago, it was revenge on Daniel Farke, the manager who exiled him. Martin has reinvented himself as a coach and this was his first promotion in charge. Indeed, there was a danger his reign would descend into disaster when the Saints lost four consecutive games in September. A win over Farke’s Leeds was the catalyst for a 25-game unbeaten run. Now, another has made him a Premier League manager.