By Chris Wright
Let’s hear it for Bournemouth, Champions of the Championship!
The top spot changed hands a couple of times over the course of a rollicking last day down in the second tier, but thanks to a late Sheffield Wednesday equaliser against Watford, the Cherries found themselves a single point clear at the summit come full-time thanks to their 3-0 win over Charlton.
As such, as of next season, Eddie Howe’s band of brothers will be playing top flight football for the very first time in the club’s 125-year history…
Thoroughly well deserved it is too. To see the two most creative, attacking sides in the league get promoted in first and second place gives us a warm sense of affirmation.
A lot has been made of Bournemouth’s ascension not quite being the back-from-the-brink fairytale it’s being portrayed as in some quarters – what with their Russian millionaire backing, exorbitant financial postings and such – but the fact remains that Howe has built and honed himself a wonderfully cohesive, expansive and easy-on-the-eye side on a relative shoestring.
Elsewhere on a rollercoaster final day in the Championship, several teams chop and changed their way in and out of the play-offs, but it all ended with Norwich, Middlesbrough, Brentford and Ipswich occupying third to sixth spots respectively.
Plucky little Bournemouth and Brentford both playing in the Premier League together has a certain ring to it, doesn’t it?
As for Derby. Oh dear, oh dear. Top of the league in March, only to slide right out of the play-offs by the time the gong sounded in May.
It truly has been The Ultimate Capitulation™.
How disappointing. No, really ;)