So, as I predicted, the Championship play-off final at Wembley on May 24 will be between Bristol City and Hull City. Well, OK, I said that Crystal Palace were red-hot favourites. You can’t get everything right!

As a Watford fan I'm devastated that we will not be at Wembley, but in reality I know our team wasn’t good enough. A series of individual errors cost us dearly in the semi-final and Hull City played the game in an error-free manner at the back, and a clinical manner up front.

We’ll never know what would have happened if Danny Shittu’s perfectly good goal had not been disallowed in the first leg after just four minutes but, in the end, Hull deserved to go through.

'Crystal Palace, under Neil Warnock, have gone from strength to strength. With good support and fine young players coming through, I have no doubt that they will be there or thereabouts again next season'


I watched the games between Bristol City and Palace and I think the better team over the two legs have made it to Wembley. I really fancied Palace but they came up a little short in the end. Fair play to City, who went into the games with little momentum but managed to perform when it mattered.

Who will win the final? It’s a very difficult one to call. If I hadn’t watched all the games I would have said that Hull were the better of the two sides. However, having seen the way Bristol City dealt with the in-form Palace side, I might just be leaning slightly towards them.

Both Watford and Palace will look at their performances and see what they could have done better. Palace will look at David Noble’s strike for Bristol City in the first leg and Lee Trundle’s brilliance and Michael McIndoe’s thunderbolt in the second, and hold their hands up to the other team winning the game rather than them losing it.

Watford will look at a horrendous error by Shittu and abysmal marking in the first leg, followed by horrendous errors by both Jay Demerit and Richard Lee and further abysmal marking in the second leg. Watford have to be kicking themselves most out of the two teams because, without wishing to take any credit away from Hull, they handed the tie to them on a plate.

Crystal Palace, under Neil Warnock, have gone from strength to strength. With good support and fine young players coming through, I have no doubt that they will be there or thereabouts again next season.

For Watford, winning only one of their last 16 games and being booed by their own supporters, it's time to go back to the drawing board and see whether a realistic challenge can be mounted again.

The immediate future for the two defeated semi-finalists looks very different. Of course, the future for one of the finalists will be very different as well. The current sides of Bristol City and Hull City would not survive in the Premier League and whoever goes up will need to invest heavily to have any chance of avoiding "doing a Derby".

It has been a rollercoaster ride of a season in the Championship and a part of me is very relieved and happy that it is all over for Watford. I would have loved a trip to Wembley, but we were simply not good enough.

One of Bristol City and Hull will have a fantastic day on May 24. The other team will have a hard job to pick themselves up and start next season well. Good luck to both, but it's a fact that it will all end in tears for one of them. It would have been Watford, so I’m sort of glad we’re not there!