Sky Bet Championship play-off final: The stats for Aston Villa v Fulham

The winner earns a spot in the Premier League, and can expect to net around £160m from reaching the top-flight.

That money will significantly increase if they can survive their first season back.

Sky Bet make Fulham the 8/13 favourites to lift the trophy, whilst Aston Villa are the 5/4 outsiders.

Opta facts

• Fulham are featuring in their first ever play-off final, having previously lost in the semi-finals in 1988/89 (third-tier), 1997/98 (third-tier) and 2016/17 (second-tier), while Aston Villa have reached the final in their first ever play-off campaign.
• Steve Bruce is set to manage in his third play-off final – he has been promoted in both of his previous two, progressing on penalties in 2001-02 as Birmingham manager against Norwich and beating Sheffield Wednesday with Hull in 2015-16.
• Indeed, he’s the third manager to manage in three play-off finals in the second tier, after Brian Little (three finals between 1991-92 and 1993-94) and Ian Holloway (2009-10, 2011-12 and 2012-13).
• Bruce has won four promotions to the top-flight (2001-02, 2006-07, 2012-13 and 2015-16), a joint-record with Neil Warnock, who achieved his fourth this season with Cardiff.
• These sides both claimed a win apiece in their Championship meetings this season, with Villa winning 2-1 at Villa Park in October and Fulham winning 2-0 at Craven Cottage in February.
• The Cottagers are playing just their second match at Wembley – they lost their previous visit in the 1975 FA Cup final against West Ham.
• Fulham’s gap of 15,279 days between playing their first and second matches at Wembley is the third longest in history, after Brentford (19,915 – November 1930 to June 1985) and Southend United (30,073 – December 1930 to April 2013).
• In Fulham’s semi-final second leg against Derby, Ryan Sessegnon became the youngest scorer in the history of the second-tier play-offs (17y 360d). The youngest player to score in a second-tier play-off final is Julian Joachim (18y 253d), who scored for Leicester City against Swindon Town in May 1993.
• Only Matej Vydra (21) has scored more Championship goals than Lewis Grabban (20) this season – however, Grabban has played six Championship play-off games previously and failed to score in any, featuring in the 2015 final for Norwich and last season’s final for Reading.
• Robert Snodgrass and Ahmed Elmohamady featured in the 2016 Championship play-off final for Steve Bruce’s victorious Hull side – Snodgrass assisted Mohamed Diame’s winning goal.
• The team scoring first in the Championship play-off final has gone on to win promotion on each of the last six occasions in which the final hasn’t been goalless – the last time a team failed to win having scored first was Cardiff City in 2010 against Blackpool.
• Aston Villa haven’t faced a shot on target in any of their last three halves of football, since a 40th minute Daniel Ayala header in the first leg of their play-off semi-final (140 minutes in total).

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Odds correct at 1550 BST (22/05/18)

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