Tag: Season Preview

Who better to start off the new season preview than The Who? This season it will be the actual song titles, and not bastardised versions. How relevant the titles will be to what is going on will be anyone’s guess.

Do you remember that brilliant end to last season, the playoff wins, the Wembley victory, and the promotion it secured. The celebration at the Broadfield Stadium two days later? The pictures with the playoff winner’s trophy?

How long did it take for that balloon to deflate? Well, not long, after a day of get your picture taken with the playoff win trophy, and the initial burst of record season ticket sales (which are now over 1900) came lots of pieces of news that were less than optimum.

It could have been a case of having a title of Another One Bites The Dust, as for a couple of weeks that was what it was like, another day saw another of the promotion winning squad disappear off out the door. Incoming players weren’t quite as quick at appearing. There were plenty of gallows humour posts, and things like ‘the turnstile number 8 operator has been transferred to Dorking’, and ‘the tea lady has moved on to Three Bridges’.

I was disappointed to see the programme editor had moved on as well. Oh, no, hold on, we don’t have a programme do we. (I can’t promise that this will be my last mention of this, even if I should follow the suggestion one of our fans shouted to Scott at the Lewes friendly – ‘Let it go.’ Although there is talk of a monthly fanzine / magazine to start in September which will cover some of the programme needs, so need to see how that pans out I suppose.)

On the forums there was the inevitable outcry, and the thread to throw any incoming player rumours into. Of course, I made my own less than helpful suggestion based on a lifetime of reading comic strips.

Can we get the following XI, sod the formation.

Ben Leiper

Kurt Panzer

Sebastian Griswell

Bobby Booth

Hamish Balfour

Billy Dane (as long as he’s still got his old boots)

Kevin Mouse

Jon Stark

Nick Jarvis

Roy Race

Billy the Fish

That lot should see us get promoted.

We had the saga of Preston Johnson standing down as co-chairman, only to come back and relocate his family to Crawley to step back in after the worst of sales furore. There have been some reasonable pieces coming out from him as the off season has gone on. And the fan forum with new co-chair Ben Levin on Monday was very positive and there were a lot of things covered that I have moaned about previously (club shop, extra turnstiles, east marquee – if not immediate fixes then at least they are on the radar, along with a new digital ticketing system before the end of the year.)

There have been signings. The same kind of mix of players who were hardly household names in their own households as we had last season, but there are players in that mix who have played in the top flight, albeit (apart from the new keeper) not the English top flight, but the Dutch and Scottish ones, and we have got a couple of loans in from Premiership sides. But we are still at least a couple of players short, and especially light up front. But that is apparently being worked on as I write this.

And the turnover of players will mean there will need to be some turnover in the fan chants. It depends on who plays regularly and does well, but Pat Boone’s ‘Speedy Gonzales’ seems a possibility

Oh Speedy Gonzalez (speedy Gonzalez)

Down the wing he roams

Oh Speedy Gonzalez (speedy Gonzalez)

Leaves the defender all alone

Then, as I mentioned in my friendlies piece, traditional Irish classic, Molly Malone has been bouncing around in my head already.

In Crawley’s fair town

At the Broadfield Stadium Ground

We all set eyes on our own Scott Malone

As he runs down the wing

And gets his cross in

We cry, head it, or kick it, just get the ball in

And I’m sure someone could do something with Meet The Flintstones for Josh Flint.

The new kits were unveiled, red, white, and blue, and all with a very nice trident design in the pattern of them. We have gone back to them being produced by Errea, which as I have mentioned before is the Italian for ‘two sizes smaller than it says on the label’. Although when they have gone on presale, the footer note says to buy a size bigger than you would usually wear, so at least they know their sizes are a bit on the snug side. The sell off of all the old Adidas gear did see me pick up a lot of bargain clothing, including the day before the Palace game where there was a lot of stuff not at the trophy picture day sell off. I got one of the puffer hooded coats for £25, a bargain not to be missed. Now I’m wondering just how many layers of CTFC gear I can wear at the same time.

I made it to the first two preseason friendly, the remainder were trickier. The two other midweek games were too far to get to on time on a workday evening, and the only home (and weekend) game, against Crystal Palace, was a ridiculous 12:30 kick off. Which as it is a friendly and clashes with my writing group, means the writing group wins. It will be a tougher choice once the proper season starts. It’s a battle of things important to me which is going to happen more often during the season now that Sky Sports is on the scene fucking up kick off times. I understand it brings in a fair amount of money for the club, and it raises the club’s profile both here and overseas, but as usual, no one gives a shit about the fans. Shifting game start times (and days) willy nilly. Making travel more difficult. Just leave them at 3pm on a Saturday. Crawley have a few televised games early in the season. I would love to have a big banner screaming FUCK SKY SPORTS to unfurl at those games (and in smaller print underneath ‘we want our 3pm back’). But I suspect that would just get me banned, something I definitely don’t want to be. Anyway, I did make it to the last of the friendlies as well, and there is a piece on all of them together at the link below.

Are Friends Electric

A wish from me for the season is for people to clear up after themselves. I can guarantee that by the end of the game the stands will be litter strewn hovels. People can manage to get the food and drink to their seats but can’t possibly take the litter away with them at the end. They just drop it and expect someone else to clean it up. And again most of them have to walk past the wheelie bins placed next to the bottom of each set of stairs out of the stands when they are leaving. And the clean up all costs the club money, which might be able to be spent on other things, such as the playing budget or stadium improvements.

It does look as if something has been done along the back of the east marquee as when passing it the last few times it doesn’t look as if there is still tatty, flappy tarpaulin there. I’ll see when at the game on Saturday what they’ve actually done, but hopefully it is something a bit more solid / wind resistant.

It was my birthday over the summer break and one of the presents was a print of the painting of the Broadfield Stadium, so that has now been framed and is up for people to see as soon as they walk into the house.

I found the book Soccernomics in a charity shop over the summer, and although it is about ten years old now, there are a couple of chapters in there that show how the kind of data driven transfers we have seen from WAGMI came about at first, and how clubs are somewhat reluctantly beginning to use that kind of data. It was an interesting read.

There was also time to watch the latest series of Welcome To Wrexham. We had a few seconds of action included from our home game, but there was no mention of the drubbing at their place towards the end of the season. I know they get berated as FC Hollywood, but it is still interesting to see what they are doing to help the wider community as well, not just the football side of it.

And with a week to go, the season preview football magazines are out. Both Four Four Two and When Saturday Comes have the same predictions as they did for us last season. Rock bottom of the division. But as we all know, this season it is a different division, as we defied their predictions and got promoted, so what do they know?

Both Sam Jordan (in FFT) and Carol Bates (in WSC) were well reasoned and optimistic in their answers to the questions set.

The answers from other teams amused me as well. In WSC, Mansfield said their worst moment of last season was us thumping them 4-1 at their place, and Crewe had their playoff final loss to us as their worst moment. We might have made it a hat trick, but WSC still boycott asking the MK Dons questions.

It would seem Mansfield take the cue from their manager and are obsessed with us. In FFT their respondent said they were least looking forward to playing us this season, and the one player they wanted there was Klaidi Lolos. Crewe’s respondent was saying that Jack Powell will be their key player for the new season. And Gillingham’s respondent said the player they would gladly drive to another club was Ashley Nadesan, so I’m assuming they went on a trip to Sutton last week.

Opta weren’t quite so pessimistic about us, they still had us as being relegated, but going down fighting in 21^st and not dead last, and less than two points from survival.

Elsewhere on the web, the Real EFL followed the magazines and had us rock bottom. The common denominator for them all is we are taking Shrewsbury with us.

Whilst reading the magazines I did find the most random of stats which piqued my interest. Apparently, there is now only one side in the Premier League / Football League whose ground is situated in a parliamentary constituency with a Conservative MP this season, and that is the newly promoted Bromley.

So, enough random tangents, time for my predictions for the season. I tend to be a natural pessimist, but I won’t be going for us for relegation, no matter what all the magazines and websites and bookies (fucking pox on the world) say. I would be happy with 20^th, but that leaves a lot of squeaky bum time to have to contend with during the season. I will go for us being somewhere in the teens.

As for the cups, well, I’d hope we were able to get out of the group stage of the Bristol Street Motors Trophy again this year. Given the draw I’d also hope to see us make the second round of the Carabao Cup, but that might well be it for us this season. And I’m hopeful that we will get a January FA Cup game this season as well.

All that is left is to get the new kit, get my custom name and number on it and settle down in the usual place near the halfway line in the east marquee and welcome Blackpool for the first game of the season. Tickets for the first two cup games of the season are in pocket, as is the one for the first away game of the season at Cambridge.

There are some tasty away trips this season, both from a perspective of big clubs to be pitted against, and some lovely historic cities to visit. Lincoln being a Tuesday night is a pain as will probably miss that one, and Exeter between Christmas and New Year is an arse, but still lots of others to go to, and nice weekends away to be had (oh, and Birmingham as well).

Come on you reds.

Not as sung by the Average White Band, but a pre-emptor to an Average Football Team.

Another season is almost upon us, and it will be our third season as season ticket holders. Although when I wrote most of this piece on Wednesday night, I hadn’t picked up my season ticket as it was last minute dot com again for having them ready to pick up. They only became available less than a week before the first home game of the season. I did see this week on my timehop that I picked last season’s season ticket up at this time as well, after the first game of the season, but that was away at Carlisle, so it was in time for the first home game. They weren’t ready until the last week in July and I was on holiday.

It really doesn’t seem like nearly three months since the last game of last season, the smoke flare filled away trip to Swindon.

That trip showed up some of the differences in the running of clubs, between well run, organised ones, and the omnishambles we have running ours. They were already selling their season tickets for this season; their prices were in place and sales were open. It would still be another month before our new season prices were set (the same as last season, so surely a decision that could have been made earlier), and another week before they went on sale to existing season ticket holders. Then another two weeks before general sale, all of which compresses the time to produce and have them ready. It would be nice if they were ready sometime before the week of the first game, and ideally before the school holidays start and there is the mad rush away for two weeks.

I saw this in Swindon’s programme. It was four quid, so a pound more than ours, but miles better in content and production. I did moan quite a bit about the quality of the content of the programme last season, but at least we had one last season. One of the summer announcements from the club was they have scrapped the programme. Not moved it to a digital one as some other clubs have, but got rid of it completely. I’m not happy about it in the slightest, and did a long post on the forum and Facebook page about how it was wrong. The reasons were it’s too expensive to produce (raise the price then), and sales had dropped off (which I saw evidence to the contrary of during the season).

We survived being relegated last season by the skin on the skin of our teeth, and since then the revolving doors of players leaving and then joining the club has picked up pace. In fact, it has gone around quick enough that the club could have stored enough power from the dynamo to generate electricity to see us through to Christmas.

A lot of the longer established players, and some of the fan favourites have left. All the loanees went back to their parent clubs, only to then get loaned out again somewhere else for this season. Jack Powell and James Tilley went within a couple of days of each other, but thankfully there has been plenty of time for Scott Lindsey to work on who will be the dead ball specialists this season. Unlike the game last season when they both got substituted within a couple of minutes of each other and when we got a free kick all the players on the pitch stood around looking at each other wondering who was going to take it.

A day before the season started last year a plausible starting line up may have been Glenn Morris, George Francomb, Ludwig Francillette, Tony Craig, Jake Hessenthaler, Atamide Oteh, James Tilley, Jack Powell, Ashley Nadesan, Tom Nichols, and Kwesi Appiah. And with a bench of Balcome, Nazeeb, Fellows, Balagizi, Mason, Jenks, and Marshall. None of them survive going into Saturday’s first game of this season. And that’s not including a whole raft (well more like a cross channel ferry) of fringe players to be out the door.

At first it seemed as if there were no replacements coming in. Incoming were thin on the ground. This has picked up over the last few weeks with a new name appearing every couple of days. It is going to be a vastly different team and squad to the one we were used to that sees the new season in. And although the club always announced the new signing as being ex-<insert league club’s name here>, invariably the club we picked them up from were non-league.

To be fair, after last season’s utter shit storm, having a vastly refreshed squad may not be the bad thing that many people have made it out to be.

And if I’m honest the person I feel sorriest for is whoever comes up with the player chants and songs. With only Tsaroulla left of the established songs (there was a fledgling Telford one starting), there is a whole new playlist needed. I can see potential for a couple of new songs, but they are most definitely showing up my age. As I would be disappointed if there isn’t a bit of Modern Romance action going with ‘Ay ay ay ay Orsi’, and I’m not sure whether it should be the Dave Clark Five’s “Glad All Over”, or Captain Sensible’s “Glad It’s All Over” that needs to be repackaged as ‘Gladwin’s All Over’. But I know it certainly wouldn’t do to be using the chorus of Jilted John’s “Jilted John” for Kellen Gordon as is, but there are so many other adjectives that might be more appropriate than moron for it.

I had high hopes going into last season, and I’m much more muted this season. Pre-season has been interesting. All our games against non-league opposition have finished with us winning 2–1. Our two games against higher level opposition including the four thirty-minute period one against Portsmouth, were heavy defeats. But there are signs of a plan and a playing style, which is more than Betsy ball brought us last year. I’m not going to say playoffs, but I think somewhere in mid table is achievable. And perhaps a few less manager changes in the season might help.

Four Four Two magazine has us to finish dead last, relegation favourites, and going down with Sutton. It’s so bad none of the other team’s contributors to the review section bothered to take pot shots at us like five of them did last season. Our own fan file contributor just said bottom half for us. Which I suppose is realistic.

When Saturday Comes left their pre-season issue until the last minute, it came out today, so I’ve not seen it yet, but as they had us to finish twentieth last season, I doubt they’ll have us any higher than that for this season.

I’m going to go for where Four Four Two had us finishing last season — fourteenth.

As for the cups? Well, I can’t see us doing as well in the Carabao cup as we did last season. Exeter away that early in the season isn’t deal, and I can see a first round exit.

For the FA cup, pretty much anything would be better than last year’s effort, especially with the Sideman ‘trial’ debacle overshadowing the build up to the game, and the non-performance in it. I’m going to go for the third round for us, as hopefully we’ll have a settled side by the time the first round comes around in November.

As for the EFL trophy, I know there is a lot of ‘who cares’, but we did well enough last season and were unlucky not to progress from the group stage. Let’s go a game further this season, eh?

There is always the cloud of the crypto clowns hanging over us. The new kit isn’t due until at least tomorrow, if it is in time then it will be the same as the first batch last season, sold out the back of a transit van. We don’t have a shirt sponsor for the season, it’s going to rotate between various half-hearted organisations through the season. We don’t even have a stadium sponsor again. But there was a big fanfare about County Mall sponsoring the “Goal and Replay”. Which means I’ll see about thirty five percent of that from my seat.

There will be protests, there will be flares (not sure whether the smoke ones, or the seventies fashion disaster are worse), there will be abuse of the lino, and there may even be two hundred fans at an away ground in the middle of winter waving one shoe at the pitch. It may be bad, it may be good, but it is unlikely to be boring.

Roll on Saturday, and for a change we have a home game instead of an away trip to the ends of the earth. Bradford City start us off, so plenty of opportunity to wind Mark Hughes up again, and for at least one set of fans to wish the crypto clowns had succeeded in buying Bradford.

Come on you reds.