Reading, Swansea, Huddersfield, Peterborough, Stevenage and Torquay – best of luck

While there is a little kickabout planned for Wembley tomorrow evening, fans of the above clubs will be focused on more important things.
It’s play-off final weekend and it kicks off tomorrow afternoon at three when Stevenage take on Torquay for the right to play in League One next season.

Torquay boss Paul Buckle has been heavily tipped for a move to Bristol Rovers at the end of the season and I can’t help but feel that this could be a major distraction for the Gulls. Buckle is a very talented coach, but if Torquay fail to win this game - and he does indeed jump ship - he might go from hero to villain within days.

The story of Stevenage is a great one. Founded out of the ashes of the town’s previous club in 1976, they worked their way up the divisions and eventually won the Conference twenty years later. Sadly the FA ruled that the club’s infrastructure wasn’t up to scratch, but they kept plugging away and improved themselves both on and off the field before winning promotion to the league two years ago. They now have a stadium that wouldn’t necessarily look out of place in League One.

My prediction: Stevenage to win, Buckle to join Rovers.

On Sunday Huddersfield take on Posh and this should be a cracker.

Terriers boss Lee Clark has his side playing with the same verve as his old boss Kevin Keegan had Clark and Newcastle playing with in the mid-1990s. But Geordie Clark is a little more canny and is prepared to defend when he has to. A win for Huddersfield would look great on Clark’s CV and go some way to seeing his name mentioned the next time a vacancy comes up at his home town club – in a couple of months given Newcastle’s track record!

Nothing will set Darren Ferguson up for the summer more than taking Peterborough back up to the Championship and, in the process, replacing Preston who sacked him I December after less than a year in the job. Within two weeks he was back at Posh – the club he had parted company with one year before.

My prediction: Huddersfield to win, Ferguson to face Preston in the league next term.

The big game of the weekend wraps up the season on Monday and is worth an absolute fortune to the winners – well for at least one season anyway.

Both Reading and Swansea play great attacking football and are a real credit to the game.

Swansea boss Brendan Rodgers joined the club about six months after getting the boot from … Reading. At the time the Reading fans – who had been used to years of watching Steve Coppell’s sides – didn’t take to Rodgers style of football and the players seemingly felt the same way as they struggled to get the results they needed. Rodgers left the club “by mutual consent” in December 2009, six months after arriving. Last summer he hooked up with Swansea, but following his departure, was replaced at Reading by Brian McDermott. Since joining Swansea he has had them playing arguably the most attractive football in the Championship this season.

McDermott has been with the club since 2000 as a scout, youth and reserve team manager and while Rodgers couldn’t seem to get his message across to the Reading boys, McDermott clicked with them immediately … or as quickly as Rodgers seems to have done in South Wales.

I haven’t seen a lot of Reading 'live' this season so it's hard to comment on them fairly, but I have been to Swansea. Unfortunately they lost both games – to Cardiff in the league and Orient in the Cup. On both occasions they deserved something from the games though.

This one is too close to call, but I’ll give the nod to Swansea, with Reading coming up automatically next season if they manage to hold on to McDermott and most of their squad.