Cambridge United have had an absolutely nightmare season and will try to forget it as quickly as possible. The campaign hardly started with high expectations as Martin Ling was not given the funds to strengthen and the squad was stripped of some of the key players of the previous campaign. And indeed the early weeks of the campaign were quite disappointing as the U's struggled to impose themselves in games and the sides was constantly changing. Back-to-back defeats against Bath City and Hayes & Yeading left Ling in a precarious position as the confidence of the players was shot but they ended the poor run with a good draw away at Fleetwood. That result inspired a long unbeaten run in the league and the team was close to dumping Huddersfield out of the FA Cup as well but lost 2:1 in a replay with the Terriers scoring twice in injury time. Yet, there was finally some momentum as Robbie Willmott was mesmerising on the wing and Danny Wright was finding his form up front. However, the structure remained brittle and the early days of 2011 signalled the end of the good run while the financial problems come to light. Willmott was sold to Luton and the manager was left to work with youngsters. The U's lost six games in a row and eventually the manager was given the sack in early February. Things hardly improved under caretaker Jez George at first but gradually the players were starting to get more settled and the losses were turned to draws and there was the odd win as well. However, Cambridge still struggled to put a solid winning run under their belt and remained precariously close to the drop zone. This dragged until the closing stages of the season and only a dramatic 1:0 win over Hayes & Yeading secured safety with a week left. However, the questions marks remain as Cambridge is a too big a club to flirt with relegation and a lot of rebuilding and investment is needed in the coming months.
