Can Sunderland or Sheffield United be a successful Premier League team if they win the Championship playoff?

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As Sunderland and Sheffield United prepare for battle at Wembley on Saturday, one eye will be on a return to the Premier League. For the winner of the match, the other eye won't have long for celebration as a busy summer is ahead. For the second consecutive season, all three newly promoted teams were relegated to the Championship, and the gap between the Premier League mainstays has continued to grow, while it becomes harder for newly promoted teams to hang with the increased spending and expectations that life in the Premier League brings.

For the winners of the promotion playoff, things can be even bleaker, with only four teams who came to the top flight following Wembley triumph maintaining their Premier League status since 2014. The average finish for teams in their following Premier League season after winning the playoff has only been 17.6, which isn't good enough for Premier League survival. Of those four teams to stay in the league, only three are still in the Premier League, with the other being Huddersfield Town, who have fallen all the way down to League One. Aston Villa, Brentford, and Nottingham Forest were the sides to stay up but all have done it in different ways.

This isn't to paint a hopeless picture for Sunderland or Sheffield United, but more to examine what makes a successful playoff winner. What will the team that emerges from Saturday's game need to do in order to compete. That's where it's good to focus on Brentford and Nottingham Forest in particular. While Aston Villa did it, that team never should've been relegated to begin with, and having a young Jack Grealish on the roster helped give them a leg up that other teams couldn't match. Brentford had their star as well in Ollie Watkins, but he wasn't a proven Premier League player before earning his stripes with the Bees before becoming one of the best strikers in the top flight with Aston Villa which is something that Sunderland and Sheffield United can look to emulate.

The Forest way

When Nottingham Forest were promoted, what they did was revolutionary, buying an entirely new squad for the top flight and then adding more players in January while also moving on from a club legend in Steve Cooper to hire Nuno Espirito Santo and stay in the Premier League. It was a high risk, high reward affair with relegation likely putting them in hot water with Financial Fair Play rules, but it was a gamble that paid off. Making a profit from sending Brennan Johnson to Tottenham, the Tricky Trees have been able to reinvest by turning fringe Premier League players like Anthony Elanga and Callum Hudson-Odoi into stars and even weakened their rivals by adding Chris Wood from Burnley to scrape out survival.

Not every team can match what Forest did, and considering Sheffield United's shrewd spending after previous promotions, they may not even attempt to do what Forest did, but it did push the Tricky Trees into Europe this season so there are merits to this path, if you can somehow get it right, despite the risks.

Steady Brentford

While the Bees may not have crashed the Premier League in a similar way to Forest, steady leadership from Thomas Frank, good recruitment, and taking advantage of set pieces have been able to turn them into a solid Premier League side. Bryan Mbeumo and Yoane Wissa have formed quite an attacking duo, while Brentford has been able to surround them with solid contributors while building an identity in the Premier League. Not built on a true star, the Bees are able to avoid being too reliant on one player, surviving the suspension and then sale of star striker Ivan Toney, to create a repeatable setup and stay in the top flight.

They still need to hit the next step of winning something or qualifying for Europe but being closer to that goal than the championship, despite only being promoted in 2021, it's something that could be done. Given Sunderland's reliance on youth like Chris Rigg, Jobe Bellingham and Wilson Isador, the Black Cats can expect improvement if they're promoted and with smart recruitment, there's no reason why they can't follow a similar path to Brentford.

The hard part is getting there and by the end of Saturday, one team will have a task on their hands but in looking at previous examples of success coming from the Championship, there's a path to making sure that the winner of the promotion playoff doesn't end up crashing back down the pyramid.