Just finished season 16/17 and gotta admit I'm quite pleased with achieving
promotion to League One immediately. Still, no division win yet, costs me quite a few points by now...
Surprisingly we did really well from the start as we always tinkered around the playoff places until going on a 24 match unbeaten run (club record so far) to lift us up to 2nd. We pretty much stumbled into promotion though, securing 3rd place on the last day with a 6-0 at Burton after slumping a bit. Whatever, League One it is next year!
Cup competitions have been okay. Carling Cup (lose after penalties at Barnsley) and JPT (0-1 at Bury) were over in Round 1, FA Cup was over in round 3 where we lost to League Two dominators Southend yet again on penalties (1-1 both matches).
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Any guesses who has been our most influential player this season? I've been raving about him a bit recently.
Ryan Doble it is once more, scoring 22 goals and assisting 7 in his 42 games. His real contribution though was to just win every single ******* header up front to be honest...
The other main axis of our success were our wing backs
Alex Nicholson (loan, Newcastle) and
Wayne Lockwood (loan, Crewe). The latter especially impressed while the former will spend the coming season in Colwyn Bay as well (again on loan). Those two however gave us something we never really had before - WIDE PLAY! Seriously, sudddenly we had crosses coming from both sides of the box searching for Doble's head and sometimes even finding it!
Last I wanna present the discovery of the season, our club record signing,
Kyle Skeldon. The 17 yo came in for a whopping 9k from Tamworth and almost immediately entered our starting line up. He is just amazing for his age, already English U19 international and our centerpiece for years to come hopefully. Pretty excited about him.
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Next, the youth. I'm pleased with how things are going right now, especially since we are getting decent prospects as it seems. Apart from Skeldon we do have a few Championship quality prospects from our own youth. I'm just gonna mention three guys I have high hopes for.
Huw Hughes came with our third youth candidates team and didn't look too impressive originally (cf p. 17). Well, he has improved quite a bit and is by now a regular face in our match squad, helping out on both wing back positions and doing so quite well. After this season he'll probably take over the WBR position from Alex Nicholson as I really want to develop him as well as possible. Then there is
Stuart Bloor, came in one year after Huw. He is supposed to be a striker but he'll never get a game there for me, to me he looks more like a midfielder or something, we'll see. He definitely is talented though and develops very nicely, according to my staff he'll make Championship level when developed correctly - I'm not sure if they're right. Bloor's 2nd nationality is Welsh btw. Last there is
Robbie Bond, came in for nada from TNS. He's 100% English sadly but still a pretty good prospect, gonna spend a year at BSP side Stockport to get some match practice and will take over his position in a year or two when Ziani retires.
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I was able to secure signatures of two rather big names and was beaten to a third very big name. The latter was
Glen Johnson who really sucks right now (probably due to injuries). "Sucks" as in "not quite Prem quality". He would have joined as a player/DoF but decided to go for League Two outfit Bristol Rovers sadly. The two rather big names are
Luke Shaw (loan, Southampton) and
Karim Ziani (free, former OM and Wolfsburg player, 75 caps for Algeria). Shaw will have to fill Lockwood's footsteps while Ziani is a somewhat perfect AMC for my system. Not too shabby for his 34 years and earning peanuts at Colwyn Bay.
Apart from that, players like Doble, Skeldon and Humbert still are key parts of the team and will have to perform well to avoid relegation. Another straight promotion should be impossible, I'd be happy to achieve a safe midfield position.
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