David Cameron Walker

In terms of football, this was a festive season to forget for most Crawley Town fans. Yielding just one win from four games, and even that was a scrappy win against lowly Barnet, the club went into Saturday’s FA Cup third round tie top of the league. How, only God knows.

Because Crawley were ridiculously unlucky – ironically, the one game they probably didn’t deserve to win was the one game they did win. A frustrating draw against Crewe saw Steve Evans’ side off to a below average start. It was a game that had half time come five minutes later, Town would have gone into the break 2-1 up and come home with all three points. But no. Matt Tubbs could have had a hat-trick in the first half, yet frustratingly the much sought after frontman only got one.

Crewe made themselves hard to break down in the second half, and even with ten men half chances were the extent of the rewards the enterprise of Sergio Torres yielded- and half chances, even with Tubbs on the pitch, weren’t enough. So Crawley came away from Crewe with a hard earned point, not realising potentially how crucial those two dropped points could prove to be.

Onto that fateful, bitter, Boxing Day clash with Gillingham at Fortress Broadfield, although I question the validity of the statement Fortress now. Walking up to the seemingly unbreachable fortress, I was anxious. I was nervous. It was something that I hadn’t experienced prior to a home game for a long, long time. As I walked along the stadium towards the turnstiles, I banished these unwelcome thoughts to the back of my head, and I became my usual optimistic self as I took my place in the terrace.

I’ve since learnt to trust my instinct. Crwaley started the game well, Dannie Bulman playing in a much more advanced and effective role, with the back four looking solid. That is, until Kyle McFadzean – playing in Bulman’s usual defensive midfield role – underhit his pass to Claude ‘The Tank’ Davis, who was forced to bring down Curtis Weston as he was through on goal. Davis, much to the delight of the Gillingham fans behind the goal, was promptly shown red.

A tank down, it seemed Crwaley were in for a long afternoon. The free kick, thankfully, came to nothing and Town coped with 10 men surprisingly well for the rest of the half, actually going into half time with a 1-0 lead. That man again, Tubbs scoring from the penalty spot. But our joy was short lived. Just 5 minutes into the first half, Gillingham went in front, somewhat fortuitously as a low cross from the right was not dealt with by Pablo Mills or McFadzean, and the ball bounced off the ridiculously quick Joe Kuffour’s knee for 1-1.

Two minutes later Kuffour recieved the ball on the right, unmarked by Dean Howell, before selling Mills a dummy with his left shoulder, bursting past him and curling a shot low past Shearer in goal. From then on, Crawley bombarded Gillingham with literally everything they had, and Tubbs had a goal-bound header cleared off the line with five minutes left. But for all the late pressure, Gillingham would leave the Broadfield with all three points, when you can question whether they deserved even one.

The New Year’s Eve fixture with Barnet saw Crawley return to winning ways, as an early Tyrone Barnett goal would prove to be enough, but the performance was not great.

621 Crawley fans made the journey to Oxford United for the Bank Holiday Monday fixture, wondering how the side didn’t come away from the Kassam with all three points. The game started as a scrappy affair, with neither midfield able to control the game. But after the intial 15 minutes or so Crawley began to take control, but were missing the injured Tubbs up front.

In the second period Oxford came back into it and took the lead when Shearer’s poor clearance deflected off Jon-Paul Pittman, ran towards goal where the striker gleefully slid it home at the near post – to his credit, he didn’t celebrate against his former club. After that, Crawley upped the tempo but still never really threatened Ryan Clark in the Oxford goal- that is, until a long ball from Mills just minutes before the final whistle was headed on by Davis to McFadzean, whose clever flick ran through to Barnett, who crashed the ball home from an angle to send Crawley home with a deserved point.

Five points from a possible twelve is not what the supporters asked for- but the club leaves the festive period where it began it, top of the table. If that was on offer before a ball was kicked against Crewe, we fans would have taken it.

Of course, the 1-0 FA Cup win over Championship Bristol City should get a mention, the win coming courtesy of Matt Tubbs’ well taken second half goal, and was generally thoroughly deserved. Bristol City offered little with Davis and Mills doing a superb job keeping Nicky Maynard quiet. If I was a certain Nigel Pearson, I’d spend my money on Billy Sharp instead.

Talking of Sharp, if he does leave Doncaster Rovers for Leicester, it’s reported that Dean Saunders will make a bid for Tubbs which hopefully does not happen. Monday’s game made it quite clear that the Crwaley attack has no real goal threat if Tubbs isn’t on the pitch. Tyrone Barnett’s got 13 goals this season, but Tubbs is a predatory goal machine as his 17 goals so far this campaign shows.

Regardless of that, Crawley are through to the 4th round of the FA Cup and sit top of League Two. I am, it’s fair to say, an extremely happy fan.

Que sera, sera…

Written by Louie Elmer, We Are Going Up’s Crawley Town blogger

Louie tweets at @LouieElmer

Ouch. That hurt. Oh sure, it’s funny for the rest of you, seeing ”Creepy Crawley” lose 3-1 to the ‘real’ CTFC (which doesn’t even make sense). But for Crawley fans, that hurt. Not since the 16th of October 2010 have we lost (incidentally, Newport stuck 3 past us that day as well). Something completely mental like 34 league games unbeaten; like Kolo Toure of the Invincibles said (sorry to drag Arsenal into this) – ”We’d forgotten what it was like to lose”. But it was inevitable, I guess. We couldn’t go forever without losing. So now that we’ve got that customary defeat out of our system we can, hopefully, kick on and bounce back – firstly at Southend in the Johnston’s Paint Trophy (fairly convinced I’ve not spelt that right), and then against Bristol Rovers at Fortress Broadfield on Saturday. Maybe it was the ”You aren’t actually invincible and at one point you are going to lose” wake up call this team needed, and to be fair we woke up in that second half judging by the numerous tweets I was relying on for updates. I’m not for a minute suggesting we were naive in that first half (although we probably were), but it did sound like we went up to Cheltenham thinking ”Oh, well, if we just turn up we’ll win”. So maybe in the long term this defeat may prove somewhat positive. Fair play to Cheltenham for completely hammering, drubbing and pulverising us in that first half, but the second half was more positive from a Crawley perspective – at least we fought back and, judging by said tweets, looked a lot better.

We’ve picked up an average of 2 points per game, which at the end of the season would see us on a healthy 92 points…but on the flipside we’ve already dropped 5 points and that does look quite bad on paper. They were sloppy points as well – we should never have conceded that injury time equliser at Vale Park, and Saturday’s defeat seemed depressingly sloppy performance wise.

And the most worrying aspect is this isn’t the first time we’ve had a poor first half and have had to pull ourselves together in the second half – I know we beat Southend quite convincingly in the end (3-0 for those of you unaware of the score), but in that first half we were worryingly sloppy and it was only some good last ditch defending that prevented something similar to  Saturday happening. Indeed, on another day Southend could have gone into half time with a 3-0 lead, a la Cheltenham.

On a more positive note, we breezed past Macclesfield 2-0 and soundly beat Torquay 3-1, indicating that we’re more than capable of a promotion push. At our best we’re second to none, but we very, very, rarely hit top gear, as was the case last season. Maybe it was because we rarely needed to be on top form last season, but this is a step up and I think we’ll turn in too many average performances against teams better than what we might be used to playing against to win the league this year. And that, for me, will be the real challenge for Steve Evans. Can he get the team to make the step up and turn in consistently good performances this season? Because, for me, our dogged determination and solid defence won us the league last year, more than anything. Yes, we were good, and even scintillating at times, but our Manurechester Utd-esque tendecy to nick a point when we should have lost and grab a win when we didn’t deserve it really won us the league. And it’s whether we can replicate that this season that will determine where we finish.

But sadly I can’t see us stepping up against the teams around us- last season, against the other title contenders, Wimbledon and Luton, we stepped up and delivered (I’m ignoring that 2-1 defeat away to Wimbledon). The aforementioned and extremely painful loss to Wimbledon being the only time we lost against either of the two. This season will be a lot harder and whilst I stand by my prediction of 2nd, I can’t see us winning the league.

And with Crystal Palace AND Charlton Athletic interested in star striker Matt Tubbs (apparently), this week could be about to get a whole lot worse for Crawley.

Pessimistic, I know. So I’m going to be optimistic for the rest of this blog. To be fair, I can’t see Evans selling Tubbs this late in the transfer window. I think we’ll sell him in January to be honest, as that would be the last chance to get any money for him with his contract running out at the end of the season, especially with our annoying tendency to not sort out a players contract until AFTER it’s run out. No, still pessimistic..

OK. Optimism. Hope Akpan and Charlie Wassmer look like really good players and are still only 19 I think. I’m going to stick my neck out and say Hope Akpan is one of the best midfielders in the league. To be honest, Wassmer’s defensively as good as Pablo Mills but Mills leads the defence/the whole team a lot beter, so I’d probably go for Mills over Wassmer – but give him time and Wassmer will be a lot better than Mills. Mills is a born leader in my opinion – Tony Adams style, almost.

And the regular comparisons with Patrick Vieira that Akpan is drawing seem more than justified – tough tackling, tall, gangly, fond of a driving run forward. So the future, you could say, is bright. Assuming we keep hold of key players.

I’d still like us to bring in another winger, but with the formation we play (4-4(diamond)-2) , it’s really, really unlikely. But whatever. If, come 11pm on Wednesday, this current squad is what we’re left with I’ll be happy. For now, I’m just going to enjoy League Two…

Written by Louie Elmer, We Are Going Up’s Crawley Town Blogger

Louie tweets @lelmerCTFC