Championship Playoffs, Semifinal, Second Leg, Monday, 12.05.2025, 9:00 p.m.
Two games to go until the big goal – but somehow the final is already almost within reach. Sheffield United is on the verge of returning to the Premier League, and on Monday it’s all about staying focused and getting through the semi-final.
After a 3-0 win in the first leg, there’s not much that can go wrong, especially since the opponent is not feared away from home. Accordingly, I’ll now reveal in my Sheffield United Bristol tip why I’m betting on the “Double Chance 1X” with a maximum of three goals.
The system is well known: the top two teams are promoted directly, while the teams in third to sixth place battle it out in playoffs to see who gets promoted. The decisions are coming up in the English Championship, with Leeds and Burnley already having secured their places with exactly 100 points.
Sheffield United finished third with 90 points – an impressive 22 points more than their semi-final opponents from Bristol. It’s almost a class difference, which is why the Blades were clear favorites going into this duel.
In the first leg, they naturally benefited from Bristol receiving a red card and conceding a penalty in stoppage time in the first half. In the end, the visitors were clearly superior with 16 shots to 4 and took home a 3-0 win.
That should be half the battle, because now they can theoretically lose by two goals in the following home game. So I look back on the season that is almost over – has this ever happened to Sheffield before?
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The team has suffered four defeats at home, and the 0-3 loss to Hull City would have been the only result that would not have been enough to advance in the current playoffs.
You shouldn’t expect any big, spectacular football celebrations from the Blades; the 3-0 win in the first leg was already a minor surprise. Forty-seven league games have been played, and only SIX of them have seen more than 3.5 goals!
29 times, also very interesting, neither team scored. If you want to rule out “both teams scoring” for Monday as well, you can get odds of 1.88 at Betano. Sheffield also won 22 of their 29 league wins without conceding a goal.
Incidentally, the odds for a second win over Bristol without conceding a goal climb to 3.10. Fittingly, I can also look at the head-to-head matches of recent years at this point.
2:1 and 1:1, the two matches played during the 2024/25 regular season were pretty close. Sheffield haven’t lost to Bristol in eight games, keeping five clean sheets.
Looking around our PayPal bookmakers, we see that the clear victory in the first leg of the playoffs makes it difficult to provide the right odds.
1.90 to 4.20 are the average odds for classic 1×2 bets. The visitors from Bristol know, of course, that only a football miracle will probably help them reach the final.
The Robins have not exactly shown their most stable side, conceding twelve goals in their last four games. The entire second half of the season has not gone according to plan if we take a closer look at the results.
In 2025, they never scored more than two goals, and seven of their nine wins were by exactly one goal. Bristol would need a handicap of -2 to go into extra time. Realistic?
There have been two such clear wins this season, but both were at home. The Robins generally don’t fare well away from home, managing a measly four wins!
The goal difference of -12 also shows how uncomfortable they are on the road. Since the beginning of November, they have won only once away from home, and no away result would have been enough to make up for a 3-0 defeat.
Does Sheffield United have anything to worry about? The Blades took a big step toward the playoff final with a 3-0 win over Bristol in the first leg. To be honest, I don’t think anything can go wrong here.
Bristol is one of the weakest away teams, with only four wins. None of those would have been enough to make up for a 0-3 deficit. Therefore, I’m going with the “double chance 1X.”
In addition, Sheffield’s performances are sometimes rather defensive, and real spectacles are rare. All of this adds up to the following combination bet:
Sheffield will not lose with under 3.5 goals!
