Expanding the Championship play-offs may not achieve what Premier League hopefuls think

It’s not binding yet, but Championship clubs have indicated their desire to expand the play-offs from four teams to six from next season.

There would still be two automatic promotion places, but the teams that finish third and fourth would go straight into the semi-finals. To determine the other semi-finalists, the teams finishing between fifth and eighth would play out a pair of one-legged quarter-finals.

It’s only natural that Championship clubs would be in favour of such a plan – but is it actually a good idea?

A lot of the objections, ultimately, come down to gut feeling and can be repudiated by cold, hard logic.

One is based on pure vibes. As we’ve seen with World Cups, Euros and the Champions League, any knockout tournament that does not have a number of participants that divides neatly into a power of two – two, four, eight, 16, and so on – inevitably has to be compromised by implementing measures like byes, extra rounds and best-performing third-placed sides.

There is just something that feels inherently messy and unsatisfying about that, compared with the majesty of a straightforward knockout. But such feelings are hard to rationalise and thus become difficult to argue with much logical vehemence.

The bigger issue, then, is one of competitive integrity. Does a team that finishes a third of the way down the league really deserve promotion? It’s hard to make an argument that they should. But then, has a team that finishes a quarter of the way down earned it that much more, as can happen in the current system? Not really.

Is it fair that a team that narrowly misses out on the automatic promotion places can end up missing out to a side that picked up 24 points fewer over the season? That’s what would have happened if Blackburn or Millwall had made it into the play-offs last season and gone up while Sheffield United missed out.

On the other hand… Blackburn or Millwall would have had to have beaten three supposedly superior teams to earn that promotion, while the Blades would have been given the task of beating just two supposedly inferior teams. Doesn’t that balance it out a bit? And doesn’t it mean the team that finished third would only have themselves to blame for failing to get the job done when it most counted?

On top of that: last season’s actual play-off winners, Sunderland, finished 24 points shy of automatic last season, and yet have fared significantly better in the Premier League than the automatically-promoted Leeds and Burnley.

An argument has also been advanced, based on York City’s plight in the National League last season, that getting a bye to the semi-finals by finishing in the top two places of the play-offs is actually disadvantageous.

Having finished last season in 2nd place with 96 points, York had to wait two weeks to play their play-off semi-final against Oldham – who finished 23 points behind them – and promptly lost, apparently having lost all momentum while Oldham were able to gather steam.

Incidentally, York had benefited from the opposite in achieving promotion from the National League North in 2021/22, beating 2nd-placed Brackley in the semi-finals and then triumphing in the final – despite finishing 21 points behind them in the regular season.

As we’ll see, though, the general track record of team competing in a six-team play-off does not particularly support that theory.

The National League provides handy examples of how it actually works in reality. Tiers five and six of English football are currently in their ninth successive season of a six-team play-off, giving us eight prior seasons to see how, exactly, this kind of system works.

There have been 22 play-off finals played in that time (not the full 24, thanks to the 2020/21 season getting cancelled midway through in the National League North and South). From those finals:

• Nine of the 44 sides (20.5 per cent) who reached the final got the chance to be there by virtue of two additional play-off spots being made available.
• Of those nine, just four actually won their play-off final and got promoted as a result (an 18 per cent success rate overall). That's one from the National League, two from the National League North, and one from the National League South.
• However, the lowest-ranked side in the play-offs – the team that finished 7th in each division – has made the final just three times (once per division), and all of them lost.
• Two of the four successful 6th-placed sides beat Brackley in the North final. Brackley are infamously dreadful in the play-offs, making it into the play-offs six times in a row without winning it once before finally achieving promotion last season… by finishing top of the league.
• Half of all the play-off finalists received a bye straight to the semi-finals by finishing 2nd or 3rd
• Half of all the play-off winners also finished 2nd or 3rd in the regular league season.
• Only five of the 22 finals did not feature a team that finished 2nd or 3rd in the league at all, and last season was the first time it had happened in the National League proper.
• The team that finished the highest of the two play-off finalists in the league has won the final 14 times out of 22.

* Promoted via the play-off final
† Lost the play-off final
‡ Season interrupted by COVID-19
§ Given a bye into the semi-finals, after Concord Rangers were barred from the play-offs due to failing ground size regulations

Those numbers should dispel a lot of the objections about the effect on the integrity of extending the Championship play-offs. The simple fact is that winning three play-off games is a lot to ask of a team that has crept into the sixth play-off spot, as evidenced by the fact that not a single team has yet managed to go all the way from that position in the National League.

Here’s the thing, though: that is actually the biggest damnation of the idea of extending the play-offs. If there is such little chance of the sixth-best team in the play-offs actually being able to win it, what exactly is the point in them even being there in the first place?

The answer, as ever in football, is a mixture of hope and money. Extra games mean more TV money, more eyeballs on the product, and – in theory at least – more opportunities for high-stakes spectacle.

A teeny tiny chance for the team finishing eighth is still also better than no chance whatsoever, as is the case currently; and every club likes to think they might just be able to be the exception that proves the rule. It’s not so much turkeys voting for Christmas as it is buying a lottery ticket.