Luton vs Coventry LIVE: Championship play-off final result and reaction as Luton reach the Premier League
Coventry 1-1 Luton (Luton wins 6-5 on penalties): Luton complete remarkable journey from non-league to the Premier League
Luton Town will play in the Premier League for the first time after beating Coventry City 6-5 on penalties in Saturday’s Championship playoff final at Wembley Stadium, earning a return to England’s top flight after a 31-year absence.
Coventry’s Fankaty Dabo missed the crucial penalty, blazing his shot over the crossbar, to seal the win for Luton following a 1-1 draw, then a goalless period of extra time.
The first 11 penalties of a high-quality shootout were scored before Dabo had the unenviable role of villain as he failed from 12 yards.
Jordan Clark put Luton 1-0 up in the first half before Gustavo Hamer equalised for Coventry after the break and the game headed to a shootout. Luton held their nerve to complete a journey from non-league to the Premier League in just nine years.
Relive the action as Luton beat Coventry in the Championship play-off final.
Luton 0-0 Coventry
3 mins: A cautious start from both Coventry and Luton, with a couple of early fouls from either side to break up momentum. Luton are doing most of the pressing early on.
KICK-OFF! Luton 0-0 Coventry
Underway at Wembley! Luton and Coventry are 90 minutes away from the Premier League - who can take that chance?
Luton vs Coventry LIVE: Championship play-off final
After God Save the King we are ready to go at Wembley. Both teams are unchanged.
Luton vs Coventry LIVE: Championship play-off final
Here we go! Luton and Coventry emerge out into a wall of noise at Wembley stadium, which is looking a picture here.
90 breathless minutes await as Luton and Coventry battle for a place in the Premier League.
Luton vs Coventry: Why the play-off final is about more than money
For Coventry City and Luton Town, how do you even begin to quantify the enormity of Saturday’s Championship play-off final?
Financially, of course, the prize is seismic. The winner can expect additional revenues between £170-285m over the next three seasons, depending how long they stay in the top flight. When you consider that both clubs’ annual income is around £17-18m right now, those are transformative, lottery-ticket numbers.
Money is certainly part of the story here. These two clubs have been to the brink and faced serious existential threat. Luton were docked 30 points amid financial woes in 2008-09 and fans still sing about being let down by the FA. Coventry’s holding company went into liquidation in 2013.
But this game is also about the resilience of football clubs, especially those historic institutions that are part of the fabric of their place. It is about how they keep springing back to life however hard they’re trampled, and about what might one day blossom from a lot of graft and a little hope.
Luton vs Coventry big-match preview, by Lawrence Ostlere
Coventry and Luton are proof the play-off final means more than just money
Both Coventry and Luton were in League Two as recently as 2018, now they are a game away from the Premier League and a £285m lottery ticket – but their journeys are proof it stands for so much more
Luton vs Coventry: How are Luton one game from the Premier League?
Before every home game, Luton Town’s club shop is teeming. The little building perched outside Kenilworth Road is like a temporary prefab classroom and inside it’s cosy: once you’ve bought a shirt or a mug or a woolly hat then you best be on your way to make room for someone else.
It is a different world to the extravagance of the Premier League. Tottenham, for example, boast the largest club shop in Europe: half an acre of sheer Spursy-ness, selling everything from Spurs-encrusted party bowls to the Spurs Monopoly board game, complete with a 100-seat auditorium to consume even more Spurs from the comfort of a soft chair. These two clubs seem to exist on different planets, and yet they could well be rivals in the same league next season.
Luton have climbed here by consistently punching above their weight. The club’s entire wage budget, around £6m, would buy one Manchester City sub. They are always swimming against the tide and the small but mighty Kenilworth Road is a monument to that – intimate and intense, like a particularly atmospheric cow shed, with 10,000 seats that sound like 50,000 when the linesman fails to spot a foul throw.
By Lawrence Ostlere
How Luton climbed to within one game of the Premier League
A club with a long history of punching above their weight are daring to prove you don’t need money to make it to the Premier League, writes Lawrence Ostlere
Luton vs Coventry: City aiming to come full circle after journey to hell and back
It’s 22 years and counting since Coventry City last graced the Premier League, over two decades of ups and downs, necessary ups as a result of downs, a whole chapter and more of club history written outside of the game’s elite.
Once, the Sky Blues were synonymous with top-flight football, iconic Nineties names – if not always quite among the elite – throughout the team. They lined up for the first Premier League campaign, in 1992/93, and stayed a part of that fledgling top flight for the first nine years, finishing in the bottom half each term but always there, always a tough opponent, always carrying players with a backstory, a big future, or both.
But an entire generation of football fans have never seen Coventry among the top clubs. A sea change has happened at England’s highest level since they were on the scene; they departed in 2001, two years before Roman Abramovich bought Chelsea and could now return one year after he sold it.
While billions were moved around in the transfer market and in broadcast deals in Coventry’s absence, they embarked on an altogether more painful journey; should they complete the comeback on 27 May and win the EFL Championship play-off final they will become the first team to go from the Premier League all the way down to the fourth tier... and come all the way back up again.
By Karl Matchett
Coventry aim to come full circle after journey to hell and back
Once a fixture in the Premier League, the Sky Blues face Middlesbrough as they hunt promotion through the Championship play-offs
Luton vs Coventry: How much do Championship play-off final winners earn?
The Championship play-off final offers huge rewards to the winner as either Luton Town or Coventry City will complete their fairytale rise from the ashes by reaching the Premier League.
Often dubbed ‘the richest game in football’, the play-off final is worth huge swathes of money to the winner as they get to join the elite, 20-team cash cow that is the Premier League.
How much will the winners get for being promoted to the Premier League?
Ahead of the 2020 Championship play-off final, Deloitte reported that the victorious club could earn anywhere between £135m and £265m, depending on whether or not they could avoid immediate relegation from the Premier League.
What TV money will the winning club receive in the Premier League?
Official figures for the 2020-21 season showed that broadcast revenue incredibly totalled more than £2.5bn and was distributed among the 20 clubs in the Premier League.
Of that, each club was guaranteed at least £31.4m in equal share payments, £47.5m in international TV money and £5.9m in central commercial payments: a baseline of roughly £84.8m per team, regardless of position. In fact, Norwich City, who finished bottom of the league in that campaign, were handed just over £101.5m.
By comparison, Championships clubs only receive around £8m in TV rights income for a season spent in the second tier.
Luton vs Coventry LIVE: Confirmed line-ups
Coventry and Luton have both named unchanged teams. Mark Robins plumped for the City team that beat Middlesbrough, while Luton boss Rob Edwards stuck with the same side that beat Sunderland to reach Wembley 10 days ago.
Luton vs Coventry: Pelly-Ruddock Mpanzu’s ‘crazy journey’ from non-league
Luton midfielder Pelly-Ruddock Mpanzu is aiming to reach the Premier League having been at the club since they were in the National League.
Mpanzu joined from West Ham in 2014 when Luton were languishing in the fifth tier of English football and a win in the Championship play-off final would be his fourth promotion in 10 seasons.
Over 300 appearances and nine years later, the 29-year-old is potentially 90 minutes away from reaching the top-flight and facing off with his former side next season.
Mpanzu said: “Here we are moments away from the Premier League, it’s been a good experience and I don’t want it to end on Saturday.
“I knew my ability would get me back there (Premier League), obviously you have got to have a great team around you and support, but when you have belief and know you can rise back to the top, Luton have done that in a short space of time.
“Going from non-league to the Premier League with one club would be crazy.”
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