Football Season Review

Crawley suffered a blow over the summer, as they lost manager Sean O'Driscoll, who left the club to take over at Nottingham Forest. The board took their time naming a new boss and eventually opted for Richie Barker, who did a marvelous job with Bury in the previous League One season. The young manager did a good job with the Reds - O'Driscoll's departure wasn't felt, as Crawley established themselves as one of the early season favourites to win promotion, having won nine of their opening 14 matches. However, results started getting worse in November, and one thing that was particularly worrying was the Reds' inability to win their home games against lesser sides, with the main reason for this being the poor form of their strikers, particularly skipper Gary Alexander, who went on a run of 14 games without a goal before ending it from the penalty spot. Crawley dropped out of the top six by the end of the year, and Barker made the difficult decision to let Alexander leave the club and spend the remainder of the season on loan with AFC Wimbledon. The Reds entered the New Year with a decent chance of making the top six, but they completely lost their momentum during the 'big freeze', as they played only four games between January the 1st and mid February - they had games in hand on their opponents after that, but lacked momentum, and never managed to really get back into the Play-off race in the remainder of the season, with the main reason for this being the high number of draws they played out, as they had a run of nine games during which they recorded six draws late in the season. Barker will be pleased with his side's first season in the third tier, and his squad definitely seems to have potential to make the step up and push for promotion next season.

Player of the Season: Nicky Adams