Leicester City man reflects on Championship promotion 'nightmare' amid Leeds United and Ipswich Town battle

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Leeds United’s push for automatic promotion ultimately fell short but they can still go up via the play-offs.

Leicester City defender Conor Coady admits a nervy Championship promotion run-in took its toll mentally on the players, with the end-of-season feeling more relief than ecstasy.

Leicester eventually sealed the Championship title and a return to the Premier League in April but made hard work of what looked to be a much simpler job earlier in the season. Enzo Maresca’s side enjoyed double-digit leads over their main rivals, Leeds United, Ipswich Town and Southampton, for large parts but a run of one win in six between February and March saw the gap disappear.

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With it all to play for after the March international break and so much on the line, all four automatic promotion hopefuls stumbled under the pressure but it was Leicester who managed to string three wins together and claim the title. They eventually finished seven points clear of Leeds in third but Coady insists it was not as comfortable as the table now suggests.

“The end of the season when we lost a couple of games, but Leeds were losing and Ipswich were losing, I can talk about it now,” Coady told BBC Radio 5 Live’s Monday Night Club. “It’s done and we’ve got ourselves in a position where we’re in the Premier League, but it was a nightmare. It was tough mentally. We spoke as a group, we spoke as senior players, the leadership group spoke. And the lads reacted.

“We needed a reaction from players at a certain point and at the end it looked fairly comfortable. But it wasn’t four or five games before the end. You need players to step up and leaders to pull players through and the lads certainly did that. It was more relief at the end of the season. We knew for the football club how important it was to be in the Premier League.”

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They were eventually joined by Ipswich, whose promotion was confirmed with a final-day win over the relegated Huddersfield Town. Leeds’ defeat at home to Southampton did not matter in the circumstances but both will now have one final chance to join the top-two in the Premier League.

Leeds and Southampton meet at Wembley for the Championship play-off final on Sunday, having both progressed relatively comfortably with commanding semi-final second-leg wins over Norwich City and West Bromwich Albion respectively. Nerves are already building on both sides ahead of what is regularly dubbed the most expensive one-off match in football, with the victor receiving around £150million when factoring in the added revenue of being in the Premier League next season.

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