Championship Playoff: the more things change, the more they stay the same | Aston Villa v Derby County

If you’re anything like my confused, still slightly traumatised friend, Darren, you adored nothing more than the English Premier League in the late nineties.

If you’re anything like Darren you also had the misfortune of being abducted by aliens twenty years ago, and have a head full of lasting, frozen-in-time EPL memories.

You remember Manchester United winning their 12^th English top-flight title in a close fight with Arsenal. 

You recall a young Michael Owen, barely out of his teens, and scoring 23 times for Liverpool across all competitions. 

You remember David Ginola’s hair.

You also, unquestionably, remember the seasons Aston Villa and Derby County put together.

For Villa, the 98/99 season saw them lose just one of their first 15 premier league games and take, improbably, the EPL lead into Christmas.

As for Derby, their eighth-place finish was their best top-flight performance since the early seventies, punctuated with a daring FA Cup quarter-final run.

As the interstellar craft left earth on that May afternoon in 1999, these were the EPL memories you took with you along with your completely understandable ‘why me?’ expression.

And so, after 20 long years, after god-knows-what happened up there, the aliens decided to return Darren and his EPL obsessed self, back to planet Earth this week.

And rather than give his confused mum a hug and an explanation for his absence, he rushed straight to the newspaper to check the current EPL standings.

After thinking the whole 'Manchester City thing' was a misprint (it’s not Darren, they’ve won four of the past eight EPL crowns), and, after coming to terms with the fact the league's most mercurial, most prolific player is a pint-sized Chelsea reject from Egypt, the next thing Darren did was to check in on Aston Villa and Derby County.

And it’s right here, Darren, where we break in with some bad news.

Not long after your abduction and subsequent incarceration on 'Planet X,' the fortunes of the Villains and Rams kind of went into free fall.

Yeah, Villa hung around in the Premier League for a fair while longer, but the magic of that ‘99 campaign was long gone, replaced by gross financial mismanagement and ownership turmoil. 

By the 2016 season, they finished dead last and were demoted.

Derby would enjoy just three more seasons in the Premier League before spending 16 of their next 17 out of England’s top-flight, employing no less than 21 managers in that span in their quest to return to those late 90’s, Horacio Carbonari, 'Genie In A Bottle' days.

You look as sad as the day of your abduction, Darren.

But here’s the good news.

These two are back, and it’s as though it’s 1999 all over again.

Both have both put in excellent Championship campaigns and are within a hair's breadth of one almighty ‘Bailamos.’

This evening, at midnight (Australian time), the two will square off in what’s often referred to as English football's single richest match.

A one-game playoff finale at Wembley Stadium to see who’ll be granted the 20^th and final spot in next season’s EPL - as well the $215m payday that comes with Premier League qualification. It's a fixture which Villa has got the better of Derby twice this campaign with 4-0 and 3-0 wins.

For both, it’ll be the culmination of some particularly long gazes into the mirror, followed by some enlightened moves.

In Villa’s case, it was the firing of manager Steve Bruce before Christmas and whose record simply wasn’t keeping up with the investment in the squad.

His replacement, Dean Smith, has been an inspired appointment and, who in just 33 games at the helm, boasts the best managerial winning percentage in 135 years of Aston Villa football.

For Derby, it’s been Frank Lampard who has steered the Rams' ship right to the cusp of promotion and who's even been linked with a potential move to Chelsea. That’s right Darren, that same Frank Lampard who was one of England’s most promising young footballers in the late 90s.

Aston Villa and Derby County playing off for the right to return to the Premier League. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Now Darren, should I fill you in about Brexit?

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