ALEX NEIL has laughed off Wycombe Wanderers’ attempts to play ‘mind games’ in the build-up to Saturday’s League One play-off final, and dismissed suggestions that Sunderland’s opponents will be heading to Wembley as massive underdogs to win promotion.

With Sunderland supporters set to outnumber Wycombe fans by around 50,000 to 20,000 inside Wembley, the Chairboys have spent most of this week attempting to portray themselves as plucky minnows trying to pull off a shock against the giants of League One.

Wycombe chairman Rob Couhig stirred things up at the start of the week when he described Sunderland as “the team that is a Netflix show”, while Gareth Ainsworth added further fuel to the fire this morning when he branded the Black Cats “the biggest club outside the Premier League” and claimed it was a “phenomenal achievement” for his club just to be on the same pitch as them tomorrow.

Neil can see exactly what the Wycombe camp are trying to do, and while he insists he does not want to be dragged into a public war of words with either Couhig or Ainsworth, he is keen to shut down any suggestion that Sunderland will be starting this weekend’s final as overwhelming favourites.

“Their chairman’s comments? Listen, it’s a big game, so maybe sometimes people get a bit over-excited, don’t they,” said Neil. “It’s fine. No problem. As for Gareth saying that we’re the biggest club outside the Premier League? There’s certainly no pressure from that. None of that bothers me in the slightest.

“Are we favourites? Well, people can think what they want. But the simple fact is that Wycombe were in the Championship last year.

“I’m not trying to play us down by any means. Normally, in the majority of cases, whenever I’ve listened to press conferences, people have said, ‘All the pressure is on you, the expectation is on you’. That’s normal for us, and it doesn’t bother me in the slightest.

“But if you look at Wycombe, they were in the Championship last year, whereas we’ve been in League One for four years. So, I’m not convinced how much favourites we actually are.”

Instead of getting caught up in the external chatter around the game, Neil has spent most of the last week focusing on the minute details of how to beat a Wycombe side that were in similarly good form to Sunderland in the final couple of months of the regular campaign.

The Black Cats head into Saturday’s game on the back of a 15-game unbeaten run that started back in mid-February, but Wycombe were on a 13-game unbeaten sequence of their own before they lost to MK Dons in the second leg of their play-off semi-final.

The two sides could hardly be more different in terms of their preferred playing styles, with Sunderland having developed a patient, possession-based style under Neil while Wycombe continue to be much more physical and direct under Ainsworth.

That should make for a tactically-intriguing encounter, with Neil expecting the timing of the first goal to be crucial in terms of dictating the way in which the rest of the match develops.

“It’s going to be a contrast in styles, that’s just natural with the way in which the two teams play,” he said. “But I also think it will be a game where there are dangerous moments right throughout the match.

“One thing Wycombe have got, which is a great trait, is the fact that they’re always dangerous. One ball up front from them can hurt you if it gets nodded down and somebody lands on it. One set-piece or direct ball into the box can cause damage. But then equally, we’ve got players that are capable of producing moments of magic.

“If I’m being honest, I think it’s a match that’s got the capability of going either way. If somebody gets an early goal, then I think both teams are more than capable of bursting the game wide open, and really making it an end-to-end affair. But equally, I think it could potentially be cagey.

“Depending on when the first goal comes, I think that will determine what the match is going to look like. Certainly, if we do concede the first goal, then we won’t be hanging about waiting for stuff to happen. We’ll be going to try to win. And I’m sure they will be exactly the same.”