Sunderland and Portsmouth will meet in the EFL Trophy final on Sunday at Wembley.
Sky Sports Liam Rosenior has been left in awe of the number of fans Sunderland and Portsmouth will take to Wembley ahead of their EFL trophy final on Sunday.
As reported by BBC Sport, the attendance is set to be the biggest for any final in this competition’s history, with the two sets of fans surpassing the 80,841 record which was set by Wolves and Burnley in 1988.
Added with that, both teams are in the hunt to earn promotion from League One to the Championship as they will be looking for momentum going into these final few months of the season.
Speaking to EFL Matters on Sky Sports Football (28/03/2019 at 7:20 pm), former Hull City defender Rosenior backed the duo for promotion and even claimed that they can get promoted again for the following campaign.
“It can only happen in this country with the system that we have,” Rosenior told Sky Sports. “80,000 fans going from two huge football clubs to a Checkatrade trophy final is fantastic for the competition and fantastic for the league.
“They are two teams with a really good chance of doing it [earning promotion], whether it’s through the playoffs or going up automatically. I think they’ve been unfortunate because Luton have been like a runaway train, they have been outstanding.
“But both clubs would have expected to be where they are at the start of the season. Both Kenny Jackett and Jack Ross have done fantastic jobs because League One is a difficult league – I am sure one of those clubs will be promoted this year, if not two. And I’m sure the season after, they will be promoted again because they are both being run properly.”
It is a crying shame that club’s the size of Sunderland and Portsmouth are having to compete in the third tier of English football, but things are now looking up for the duo.
Added with their visit to Wembley at the weekend, they could both earn promotion to the Championship, but one of those teams will more than likely have to do it via the playoffs.
At this moment in time, Pompey are sitting third in the table on 74 points, four points behind Barnsley and a further nine points behind runaway leaders Luton Town.
As for the Black Cats, they are fourth in the table, one point behind their weekend opponents and five points behind second-placed Barnsley. But they have two games in hand on their rivals.
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