Sheffield's chance for redemption

If there is any justice in the sporting world at all then Sheffield United will win this year's Championship play-off final at Wembley against Burnley and return to the English Premier League next season.

That is not to denigrate Burnley, one of the founding members of the old English football league in 1888, and a team that were once the best in England - league champions back in 1960 - but who have been out of the top flight since 1976.

Few could begrudge Burnley a trip to Wembley for this year's Championship play-off final - the most cut-throat game on the English football calendar with only the winner promoted to the riches of the world's most watched football competition - after it beat Reading on Tuesday night to set up a meeting with Sheffield United.

After all Burnley, which has staged a remarkable revival in recent seasons, was almost relegated from the entire football league as recently as 1987 but this season - under promising young manager Owen Coyle - has not only reached the play-off final but also came desperately close to reaching the League Cup Final against Manchester United after only being beaten narrowly by Tottenham in the semi-finals having earlier eliminated EPL giants Arsenal and Chelsea.

Indeed if Burnley was playing just about any other opposition on May 25 then no doubt it would have the support of most football fans in England and the millions of neutral football fans world-wide.

But this year's play-off final is not about Burnley, it's about Sheffield United and righting a terrible injustice from two seasons ago.

The Blades, one of those clubs that regularly yo-yos between the EPL and the Championship, were unfairly relegated two seasons ago and apart from Burnley fans and perhaps fans of their arch-rivals Sheffield Wednesday, few would begrudge the Blades returning to the EPL.

Sheffield United went down on the final day of the 2006-07 season after losing to Wigan but would not have found themselves in that situation but for a spectacular late season revival by West Ham.

And that revival came on the back of an Argentinean signing by the name of Carlos Tevez, who has since moved to Manchester United.

However West Ham's signing of Tevez was later found to have breached Premier League rules because his contract was owned by a third party - a company called Media Sports Investments.

This unusual situation reportedly scared away other EPL clubs from signing him and the Premier League later fined the Hammers a record £5.5 million pounds (A$10.94 million) for signing Tevez in such circumstances.

But considering Tevez - who scored the goal in the 1-0 win over Manchester United which ultimately kept West Ham in the EPL in the last game of the season - had almost single-handedly kept the Hammers in the EPL, there were calls for West Ham to be deducted points which would have seen the London club relegated instead of the Blades.

However because there was no precedent for the offence that West Ham committed, the EPL instead decided to issue the club with a fine.

But with public sympathy on their side, the Blades first applied to be reinstated to the EPL but failed in court before, after nearly two years, the Yorkshire club finally reached an out-of-court settlement which saw West Ham have to pay £20 million (or four million pounds a year ($A7.96 million over the next five seasons) as compensation to Sheffield United.

However even this figure came nowhere near the covering the true cost of relegation for the Blades due to the drop in revenue any clubs receives when it drops out of the EPL and misses out on lucrative television money.

But now the Blades are just one win away from returning to a competition they were wrongfully relegated from in the first place and if Sheffield United is successful in the play-off final on May 25 then expect next year's first EPL clash between the Blades and West Ham to be one of the most eagerly awaited matches of next season.