In one corner of the League One Play-Off final is a team that was in the Premier League as recently as 2017 with a grand history that includes two FA Cup victories.
In the other is a club that has spent virtually every year of its existence in the lower reaches of English football, with a one-year detour in the Championship last season for the first time in its 135-year existence.
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On Sunday at 12am (AEST), Sunderland take on Wycombe Wanderers under the famous arch at Wembley Stadium as both clubs look for a return to the second tier.
For the Black Cats, what turned into a one-year detour into League One has now become four arduous years in a league they hadn’t been in since 1988.
But for Wycombe, a team whose stats perhaps paint them as the on-field antithesis of modern football, it’s a chance to defy the odds once again and return to a league that continues to grow in disparity between the promotion chasers and the relegation battlers.
The two clubs could not be any further on opposite sides of the scale in terms of resources, playing ability and the sheer sizes of everything about them.
Yet here they stand, 90 minutes away from the Championship.
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The old saying goes that if you circle the drain enough times, you’ll eventually go down.
From the 2012/13 season in the Premier League onwards, Sunderland had finished 17th, 14th, 16th and 17th before finally dropping into the Championship having finished dead last in the 2016/17 campaign.
But if Sunderland fans thought that was as bad as it would get, boy were they wrong.
Things got much, much worse.
For the second straight season the Black Cats finished dead last, winning just seven games from 46 in the Championship.
Not only that, but football fans had a first-hand look at the club’s demise with the Netflix documentary ‘Sunderland ‘Til I Die’.
If it was painful viewing for non-Sunderland fans, spare a thought for the battlers who gathered at the Stadium of Light every weekend.
In the club’s first season in League One, they finished 5th in the league, enough for a spot in the play-offs.
A win against Portsmouth in the semi-finals brought a day at Wembley against Charlton Athletic.
But Sunderland’s horror run in Play-Off finals continued, as a stoppage time winner from Charlton consigned the Black Cats to another season in League One in what was the club’s third loss in a Play-Off final.
The following season brought even more misery and would keep Sunderland in England’s third tier for another year, as the club finished 8th.
In 2020/21, a return to the play-offs beckoned after finishing 4th in the league but the Black Cats couldn’t make it past the semi-finals.
This season promised to be different.
With Lee Johnson, a manager who had enjoyed relative success in the Championship with Bristol City without making many shockwaves, it was expected that everything would finally click at the Stadium of Light.
According to The Athletic’s Philip Buckingham, “Johnson’s Sunderland were entertaining” as well as “capable of stylish and emphatic wins.”
But what ultimately led to Johnson’s downfall was that his team “were often too flaky and timid,” with a 6-0 defeat against Bolton Wanderers in late January proving to be the final nail in the coffin, as Johnson was sacked with the club just outside of the automatic promotion spots.
In Johnson’s place arrived Alex Neil, a manager who led Norwich City to the Premier League at age 33.
Under the Scot’s tutelage, he has “almost single-handedly instilled the discipline and drive to transform an ailing team’s fortunes,” with Sunderland enjoying a 15-game unbeaten run from February 22 to today.
Socceroo Bailey Wright has loved life under Neil, although he concedes the main task at hand is still not yet complete.
“The results speak for themselves but he’s brought a real culture, a real tactical side to our game,” Wright told Sky Sports after the Play-Off semi-final victory over Sheffield Wednesday.
“We’ve got a togetherness and he’s brought that in more and more. He’s been a joy to work with but I’m sure he’ll agree: the main job isn’t done yet.”
Aiding the Black Cats this season has been sharpshooter striker Ross Stewart.
In just his second season with the club, Stewart has 23 goals to his name having scored just the two last season, although he arrived in the January window.
If Stewart can find his scoring boots when Sunderland need it most, he could write his name into club folklore along with Neil.
THE ROCK BAND COACH, 40YO CULT HERO AND UGLY FOOTBALL DRIVING FAIRYTALE STORY
Wycombe Wanders often struggle to fill a 10,000-seat stadium, have a manager who doubles as a rock singer and a talismanic 40-year-old striker who gained notoriety thanks to the FIFA video game series.
Not only that, but according to WhoScored.com, Wycombe also finished 20th out of 24 teams in League One in terms of average possession percentage (44.4 per cent) and dead last in pass success percentage (58.8 per cent) over the course of the season.
All signs point to mediocrity or perhaps relegation, but instead, Wycombe are 90 minutes away from a second season in the Championship in four years.
For a club that only made it into the Football League for the first time in 1993, it has been nothing short of a remarkable rise for the Chairboys.
Even getting to the Championship for the first time in the club’s history in the 2019/20 season came with alarmingly poor statistics, finishing last in the league in both possession (45.2 per cent) and passing accuracy (56.1) per cent.
In the League One Play-Off final that year against Oxford United, Wycombe had just 24 per cent of the ball to Oxford’s 76 per cent, yet Gareth Ainsworth’s side emerged 2-1 victors thanks to a Joe Jacobson penalty in the 79th minute.
Of course, getting such results without producing box-office football brings plenty of detractors.
But Ainsworth isn’t fussed about it, believing that the negativity from rival supporters is simply because they can’t handle losing to little old Wycombe.
“It’s something opposition fans will try to grab hold of, because they can’t stand being beaten by a smaller team like Wycombe,” Ainsworth said on The Totally Football League podcast.
“What they should be doing is looking at us going, ‘Wow, they are a small club but they are doing well.
“We know what we are, we do it well, and we are focused on every game. I don’t think anyone saying what we are affects us in any way anymore. We have had it for too long now.”
Firing Wycombe into the Championship is the strike force duo of Sam Vokes and Adebayo Akinfenwa.
Vokes joined the Chairboys at the start of the season and has been in sensational form, banging in 17 goals.
It was only three years ago that the 32-year-old was getting minutes in the Premier League with Burnley and he still has plenty left in him yet, with Wycombe the lucky beneficiaries of his remaining years.
Akinfenwa, the 40-year-old built like a brick house, will retire at the conclusion of the season regardless of Wycombe’s league position.
Despite his age, he’s made valuable contributions throughout the campaign, chipping in with six goals.
Having arrived at Wycombe after imploring managers to “hit me up on WhatsApp and get me a job” after being released by AFC Wimbledon in 2016, Akinfenwa now holds the honour of being the Chairboys’ all-time leading goalscorer in the English Football League, with 52 to his name.
A final moment of glory for Akinfenwa, regardless of whether he gets minutes in the Play-Off final or not, would be a crowning moment for the hulking forward.
For Sunderland, a club that Buckingham describes as a “car crash of a football club, one that has lost $AUD448 million in the last 15 years,” falling short at the final hurdle for the fourth time would be colossal.
The fans have been through the ringer in recent times and this Play-Off final looms as the Black Cats’ best shot at finally returning to the Championship amid slightly more familiar surroundings.
But Wycombe have Sunderland’s Wembley hoodoo on their side.
Not only that, but they have proven they can win ugly; if anything, it’s their modus operandi.
Yet the Adams Park faithful ultimately don’t care how the job gets done.
Covid robbed Wycombe fans of seeing their team in its sole season in the Championship and Ainsworth has made it his mission to alter that.
With two clubs desperate to move into the second tier for a multitude of unique reasons, it promises to be a special occasion no matter what.