Championship play-offs: Leeds and Southampton favourites but form issues leave promotion race wide open

History suggests the Championship play-offs favour those who enter them in the strongest form.

Gather momentum at the season’s end and promotion could follow. But drop needless points as nerves take hold and you face an uphill battle.

That is why this season’s Championship play-offs are harder to call than normal.

None of the semi-finalists have won more than one of their last four games. For Southampton, Leeds United, Norwich City and West Brom, form is out the window.

That loss of consistency cost Leeds automatic promotion, but Daniel Farke’s side remain, in the eyes of many, favourites to join Leicester and Ipswich as the third team up.

In most seasons their tally of 90 points would have been enough to go up automatically.

Instead, they must prepare diligently for Sunday’s semi-final first-leg against Norwich City at Carrow Road. Key players Patrick Bamford and Dan James face late races to be fit after injuries last weekend.

Their hosts, the Canaries, are by comparison an outside bet for promotion, having lost to relegated Birmingham City on the final day and finished sixth, the lowest of the play-off places.

Leeds may have done the double over them this term, but David Wagner’s Norwich were 14th at the start of December. Over a longer period of time, it is they who are the form team.

West Brom host Southampton at the Hawthorns in Sunday’s other semi-final, and the Baggies, last relegated in 2021, have been away from the Premier League for the longest among the quartet.

Carlos Corberan’s young side have perhaps overperformed, controlling matches with their possession-based style.

Yet they face a challenge to make it work against Saints, who beat them home and away this season and in seven of their last eight meetings.

If all three are on song, Adam Armstrong, Che Adams and West Ham loanee Flynn Downes can add to the Baggies’ misery in this fixture.