We will confirm the second of the Sky Bet Championship play-off finalists on Tuesday evening when the other semi-final plays down to a conclusion when Sunderland will be looking to book their spot at Wembley Stadium when they host Coventry City.
The Black Cats enter this Stadium of Light showdown with a 2-1 lead from the first leg which means that Coventry are going to have to go on the road and win the game if they are going to take an impressive season to the national stadium.
Where to watch
The match will be shown live and in full on the Sky Sports Main Event and Sky Sports Football channels with the build-up beginning at 7.30pm ahead of the 8pm kick off.
Sunderland
We all went into the first leg of this tie wondering if Sunderland really were biding their time for this semi-final to come along and just ticking things over until it arrived or whether they were pulling the wool over everyone and had run out of steam. We now know that the answer is the former and now they have the chance to finish off the good job they have started and take their season to Wembley Stadium for a one-match shootout for a place in the Premier League.
Sunderland set up to contain Coventry in that first leg and pounce on the counter and they did it ruthlessly on two occasions. Ordinarily, in front of a passionate home crowd they would probably be expected to play further up the pitch and control the game but given that they have the advantage going into this second leg it will be interesting to see if that is how they play it out or whether they adopt tactics which clearly weren’t broken and don’t need fixing.
Coventry City
There was certainly a school of thought that with their home form the way it was that the best chance Coventry City had of winning this tie was to take the advantage to the Stadium of Light for this second leg and see if they can hold on in tough circumstances. They have already had to rip that script up and employ Plan B. The problem Frank Lampard and his coaching staff will have is that they have only had four days to draw up that plan and probably less than that to go about employing fresh tactics.
I think it is fair to say that Coventry will have to prepare to break down a low block. It might not be quite as deep as it was at the CBS Arena but Sunderland are expected to ask the same question of Coventry. Can you break us down? You would imagine that the counter to it is that Coventry will employ two wide forwards and look to stretch the pitch width ways and create space for the centre-forward or the likes of Jack Rudoni and Matt Grimes to do their thing. The positive for Coventry is Frank Lampard went to Leeds trailing from the first leg with his Derby County side a few years ago and turned the tie around so he won’t be panicking just yet.
Special Offer
Sign up for a Boylesports account and bet £10 to get up to £20 in free bets! Perfect offer for the Sky Bet Championship! Click the image below for this great offer! New accounts only. 18+ T&Cs apply. Gamble Aware.
Team News
On the face of it there is no reason for Regis Le Bris to make any changes to his starting XI who were all excellent in the first leg but should the Frenchman want some fresh legs when Chris Rigg and Chris Mepham are obvious players to come in.
Coventry City made a bit of a surprise by leaving Ellis Simms on the bench in the opening game but he is expected to come in here. Ephron Mason-Clark could be one of the wingers brought in to spread this Sunderland defence.
Betting
This is a semi-final where we can use the game state to our advantage. We got the perfect glimpse of how this tie is going to play out in the first leg. Sunderland are going to sit and hit Coventry City on the counter, even more so now that they take the lead into the second leg, whereas Coventry are going to have to try to break down a lowish block if they want to face Sheffield United in the final at Wembley later in the month.
I’m not one for guessing whether Coventry will do it successfully but the one thing that we can be sure of is they will utilise a couple of wingers to stretch the pitch and get the ball out wide and look to create from there and that should bring about a lot of corners with Sunderland deep to protect their penalty box. Only Leeds United and Sheffield Wednesday picked up more corners than Coventry this season with Coventry returning an average of 5.91 corners per match this term. The regular line for Coventry in this match is 4.5 at even money but we can add 5.5 to that at a bigger price and still don’t reach their average for the campaign. Then when we look to the first leg and see they won 10 corners we might as well attack a few more lines up to 8.5 which gives us a good spread of lines at various prices. You could even go higher than that if you wanted because eight times this season Coventry have won a double figure corner count, nine if you include the first leg, and they got to nine on four other occasions. Coventry are regular corner winners and against a low block they are likely to win plenty here, as we saw on Friday night. I’ll have chunky bets on the 4.5 and 5.5 lines and smaller stakes on over 6.5, 7.5 and 8.5.
Tips
Back Coventry City – Over 4.5 corners for a 5/10 stake at 2.00 with Sky Bet
Back Coventry City – Over 5.5 corners for a 3/10 stake at 3.00 with Sky Bet
Back Coventry City – Over 6.5 corners for a 2/10 stake at 4.50 with Sky Bet
Back Coventry City – Over 7.5 corners for a 1/10 stake at 7.50 with Sky Bet
Back Coventry City – Over 8.5 corners for a 1/10 stake at 13.00 with Sky Bet
