Hello there, welcome to the Not the Top 20 podcast sponsored by Betfair, the penultimate Monday

pod of the EFL season. I'm Ali Maxwell, and it's just me in the intro at least today because

this episode is a little different to usual because it's been an unusual

and highly enjoyable few days for us. The main chunk of this podcast will contain the release of

the audio from Not the Top 20 Live. That took place on Thursday. We banged on and on about it,

didn't we, on this pod for the last few months? And you came in your hordes.

Hundreds of you joined us at the Leicester Square Theatre, and quite frankly, it was one of the

greatest nights of our lives. More on that later on. But first, the big footballing news from

the weekend in the EFL, the League One playoff final was won by Sunderland beating Wickham

2-0 and deservedly on the day booking their spot in next season's championship. It was a beautiful day

on Saturday. It was a sensational atmosphere. Sunderland came out the traps incredibly quickly, a really

fast start piled on the

pressure onto Wickham. We said that the most important thing in this game was whether or not

Sunderland, if they did start fast, would get the goal that they needed to put themselves in front

because frankly, no team can maintain that level of dominance, that speed of play or intensity

of their play for all 90 minutes.

And thankfully, for Sunderland, they did get the goal. They didn't stumble. They weren't weighed down

by history or pressure or anything like that. The man in the dugout deserves some praise,

Alex Neal, with a few nice bits of selection and strategy, I think, ahead of this game.

Firstly, and a difficult one for Gareth Ainsworth and Wickham to predict, a switch to a 4-2-3-1

formation from a three-at-the-back system which they'd played in at least the last sort of 10 games.

Elliot Emilton over Jack Clark was the surprise piece of selection as well, and that meant

...