The Eagles came into this game after defying the odds to beat Brighton & Hove Albion on their own turf in the semi-finals, and after a barren run of 1 win in 10 games as the season drew to a close.Watford were the clear favourites overall, but a resilient display from the Eagles, including great goalkeeping from Julian Speroni, dragged the clash into extra-time.As the London sun beat down, manager Ian Holloway explained that he saw a tactical weakness in the Watford defence in the shape of Marco Cassetti. Thankfully, he had just the man to exploit it.“Just keep taking him [Cassetti] on,'” Holloway told Wilfried Zaha. “‘He’ll get booked or he’ll get sent off.’“They moved him four times to try and get him away from Wilf. They put him left-back, they put him right-back, they put him sweeper, and I just said: ‘Stay there.’ My lads knew. We just keep feeding Wilf and what happened?”

What happened was a foul on Zaha inside the box at the end of the first-half of extra-time, resulting in a penalty which Phillips duly dispatched against his former club.The goal was enough to see the Eagles through, though it wasn’t plain sailing as Joel Ward cleared a Fernando Foresitieri shot off the line in the dying moments of the second-half of extra-time.The Eagles secured promotion to the Premier League on the back of this play-off final victory in 2013, and remain there today.