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Hello and welcome to The Guardian Football Weekly and NFL special, the hottest football

matches since John Aldridge at USA 94, a lot of cramp and sweat. And in the end,

Hull, Bolton and Knox County end up victorious. In Spigate terms, probably a good thing that Hull City won. Ollie McBurney, right at the death. They stayed in the championship last year on goal difference and now they're in the Premier League. It was a tight game between Bolton and Stockport for an hour or so, but in the end, the Trotters run away with it, while our Solford destined to be in league to forever after Knott's County sweep them aside.

We'll do a little on the England squad.

I roll Baz.

We're heading... hour or so, but in the end, the Trotters run away with it, while our soul for destined to be in league to forever after Knott's County sweep them aside. We'll do a little on the England squad.

I roll bars. We're heading well and truly into wedding season in the correspondence. All that plus

your questions. And that's today's Guardian Football Week clean.

On the panel today, Barry Glendanning, welcome.

Hi, Max. It's a not-the-top-20 takeover as we celebrate their Christmas, of course. George Eleg, hello. Hi, Max. Hi, Ale, Maxwell. Morning, guys. Let's begin then with the championship playoff final. Hull won Middlesbrough, Nill, Hull promoted to the Premier League. I suppose, George, it's been an, must be a very interesting week or two to be the hosts of the world's premier EFL podcast.

It's been quite good for business, it's fair to say. The Spygate content has, yeah, has done okay

for us. Because it felt like it's the first time basically ever that EFL news has been the sporting

news in the country. You know, as we said, on the day that Arsenal won the Premier League title,

the lead story on the BBC News at 10 was SpyGate and Stampton being chacked out of the playoffs,

which was pretty incredible. So yeah, it's been, it's been really fun. As you say, given the controversy that would have come about, had Middlesbrough won this playoff final, you even had the hull owner, Ashen initially on Wembley Way being interviewed before the game, announcing, which was also then BBC breaking news, that he would be taking legal action if they didn't win the game, which kind of set the whole game. Great power a great power play before a match, isn't it? I know. I know. I actually then saw him walking on Wembley way with about a million bodyguards around him shortly afterwards. There are a couple of things to this. Firstly, it's great that we're not going to have any complaints over who the promoted teams are in any kind of more arbitration panels or anything like that.

Secondly, it means the next season we're going to have two games between Middlesbrough and Southampton. And I think we can all agree that it should be the first game of the season live on Friday night because it's going to be incredible. With that in mind, Ali, to this game. And Hull probably haven't been talked about, like, I was thinking about this, you know, I did quite a few talk sports shows when Spygate happened and during an afterwards and pods. And I think we probably didn't really, if you're a whole fan, you're like, we're in the playoff final for goodness sake. And now they've won the playoff final. We're not even leading with them. Yeah, I got the sense that there was a lot of, yeah, Hull City fans and those at the

club sort of trying desperately to go, like, you know, we're actually in this and we still don't

know what time kickoff is three days before the game. And, yeah, I think everyone made it. I don't

think in the end that, you know, the stories I was reading of people flying over

from Australia and potentially going to miss the game through the uncertainty. Obviously,

thankfully they were all there and they were treated to a brilliant performance. You know,

...