Leeds v Southampton LIVE: Championship play-off final result and reaction as Saints dramatically promoted
Leeds 0-1 Southampton: Adam Armstrong’s first-half goal enough to send the Saints back into the Premier League
Southampton won promotion back to the Premier League after beating Leeds 1-0 in the Championship play-off final at Wembley, earning an immediate return to the top tier following relegation last May.
Adam Armstrong was the Southampton matchwinner as his first-half goal was enough to see off a Leeds side that struggled to muster a meaningful response, with substitute Daniel James coming closest after his shot thundered against the bar late in the second half.
Southampton will join Leicester and Ipswich in the Premier League next season, the latter being promoted after a 22-year absence from the top flight, while the Foxes also returned at the first attempt after relegation last year.
Meanwhile, Leeds, whose ownership group contains major-winning golfers Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas, suffered more play-off heartache as they failed to go up via the route for a sixth time. After winning only one of their last six regular-season games to miss out on automatic promotion, questions will also be raised about the future of manager Daniel Farke.
Relive the clash with our blog below:
Southampton secure most valuable win in football as Leeds fail to escape their past
After the expensive relegation, the lucrative promotion. Southampton contrived to finish bottom of the Premier League in a year when they spent some £160m, had three managers and only mustered six wins. They return to the world’s richest league courtesy of the world’s richest game, their prize for play-off victory probably beginning at £140m and, if they stay up, worth rather more. If Bobby Stokes, the hero of the 1976 FA Cup final, still has the most famous Wembley winner in Southampton’s history, Adam Armstrong has the most valuable. For Leeds, consigned to another season in the Championship, it ranks as the most costly.
A sixth unsuccessful play-off campaign means they are still without a win at Wembley since 1992. On the 35th anniversary of Don Revie’s death, the Damned United remain incapable of escaping their past. There was another kind of unwanted sequel: a third defeat to Southampton this season, with Armstrong scoring in all. There were times when Leeds looked like the finest team in the Championship but that trio of losses to Southampton means that, unlike Saints and Leicester, they have not rebounded to the top flight.
In the dugouts, the subplot started in Norfolk in 2017. For Russell Martin, the Norwich captain bombed out to train with the Under 23s seven years ago, it was revenge on Daniel Farke, the manager who exiled him. Martin has reinvented himself as a coach and this was his first promotion in charge. Indeed, there was a danger his reign would descend into disaster when Saints lost four consecutive games in September. A win over Farke’s Leeds was the catalyst for a 25-game unbeaten run. Now another has made him a Premier League manager.
Read Richard Jolly’s full report from Wembley:
Southampton secure most valuable win in football as Leeds fail to escape their past
Leeds 0-1 Southampton: Adam Armstrong’s first-half goal sent the Saints back into the Premier League at the first time of asking and condemned Leeds to more play-off woe
Southampton promoted to the Premier League
REACTION: Southampton players reflect on play-off final victory
Captain Jack Stephens and goalscorer Adam Armstrong discuss the dramatic victory over Leeds
FULL-TIME! Leeds 0-1 Southampton
Here’s the moment Southampton’s Premier League return was sealed!
FULL-TIME! Leeds 0-1 Southampton
Leeds’s play-off heartache continues. Six attempts to go up via the play-offs, six failures. But Southampton are back up and Russell Martin’s men will be playing Premier League football.
FULL-TIME! Leeds 0-1 Southampton
AND THEY’VE DONE IT! SOUTHAMPTON ARE BACK IN THE PREMIER LEAGUE.
At the first time of asking, they’ve bounced back from relegation and gone up through the Championship play-offs.
Leeds 0-1 Southampton
90+10 mins: Saints fans in full, full voice now. Their team are just seconds away...
James’s cross is thumped all the way up to the halfway line and Southampton then win a throw-in on the right. They’re all but there!
Leeds 0-1 Southampton
90+9 mins: Leeds pumping the ball long. Crossed into the box and Anthony handballs it trying to control. Free-kick for Southampton.
Leeds 0-1 Southampton
90+8 mins: Remember, nine minutes of injury-time were signalled but it will be more than that after the James and Walker-Peters head injuries.
McCarthy off his line again to punch away and Armstrong then completes the clearance up to Aribo. Leeds with a throw-in deep in their own half.
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