Robert Gledhill: Time to put justice before cash in unbalanced play-off scenario

Even Liverpool have broken their duck this season, appearing in the Carling and FA Cup finals.

There was a time when beaten finalists used to console themselves by saying: “At least I’ve played at Wembley, some players go through their careers without ever getting the chance.”

It has now got to the stage it seems where you have to be a pretty poor professional footballer not to have appeared at the national stadium.

With the Football Association having to pay back loans of £355m they spent on the £798m redevelopment, even semi-finals are staged at Wembley these days but the allure still appears as strong as ever.

Certainly, players, supporters and officials of York City are not grumbling about their double date this season, having made a much-needed profit of £325,000 from trips for the FA Trophy and Blue Square Premier play-off finals.

And, on Saturday, we have an all-Yorkshire League One play-off final to look forward to as Danny Wilson’s Sheffield United face Simon Grayson’s Huddersfield Town for a place in the Championship.

There will be intense sporting rivalry between the camps and I am pleased that the final involves the clubs who finished in third and fourth place.

To my mind, there is something wrong with a system whereby a team who finishes way off the pace in sixth place can win promotion.

True, the play-offs generate great excitement and rarely are there any meaningless fixtures in the last month of the campaign as clubs vie to get into that top six, but I wonder if there is a case for a re-examination of the play-off structure.

That thought was generated by comments made by experienced Huddersfield striker Alan Lee ahead of their semi-final second leg against Milton Keynes Dons last week.

“When you miss out on automatic promotion like we did (to Southampton), it is horrible. It seems so unfair when you finish third and so far in front of everyone else.

“The points total we got last season deserved to take us up. Plus, you have to turn round only a few days later in the play-offs. It can be difficult, as Sheffield United will have found out this year.”

Only one goal – from Chris Porter in the 85th minute of the second leg at Bramall Lane – separated the Blades from Stevenage in their semi-final last week after a regular season in which Wilson’s side had finished just three points shy of automatic promotion and 17 clear of their sixth-placed opponents.

It was the same for Huddersfield last season, Town finishing 16 clear of sixth-placed Bournemouth but requiring penalties to go through to the Old Trafford final – Wembley was required for the Champions League final – where they deservedly lost on the day against a Peterborough team whom they had finished eight points clear of in the regular season.

The Terriers will be hoping history repeats itself at Wembley as they finished nine adrift of the Blades this time.

But I still wonder if there is a case for awarding automatic promotion to the third-placed team if they finish well clear of the chasing pack.

Economics would probably scupper that idea in this country but in Serie B in Italy in 2007, third-placed Genoa finished 10 points ahead of fourth-placed Piacenza and so went up without a play-off as the cut-off point was nine points.

The same rule is applied to relegation play-offs there. Only two teams are involved but the cut-off gap is five points.

Of course, different play-off systems operate throughout the world and none of them are perfect.

I would prefer giving the team who finished third bottom of a league the opportunity to stay up.

They could either be involved in a two-legged final against the side who finishes third in the league below or, if we have to have two revenue-generating semi-finals and a final, pit the team from above against the fifth-placed club in the division below as third battle it out against fourth.

Some leagues also reward the highest finishers in the regular season with ‘victory’ if the tie is level on aggregate after extra-time in the second leg.

That, of course, dispenses with penalty shoot-outs and often in the tense atmosphere generated by the play-offs, these are the only things worth watching.

In fact, penalties produced the perfect finale to Huddersfield’s pulsating battle against the Cherries at the Galpharm Stadium last season.

Other suggestions for the play-offs which have been mooted include having only three teams involved, with fourth and fifth playing off over two legs for the right to meet the third-placed team in the final.

Or you could abandon two-legged ties, giving home advantage to the highest finishers as reward for their league performances.

Of, course, no one said the play-offs were designed to be fair – just ask supporters of Bognor Regis Town, who missed out on automatic promotion from Ryman League Division One South in 2010-11 by just one goal and then lost in the play-off semi-finals to Dulwich Hamlet, who finished a massive 31 points behind them.

Finally, if the play-offs are such a good thing then why not introduce them in the Premier League?

What a great series of matches we could look forward to this season if third-placed Arsenal were playing sixth-placed Chelsea and Tottenham (fourth) were facing Newcastle United (fifth) for a place in a final to decide who would claim the third Champions League spot – the fourth qualifying group place in the European competition going to the FA Cup winners.

Perhaps they don’t need the money...