FC United: Whirlwind Finish

I know, I know, two posts in under 24 hours. I apologize for the quickfire double, but I was too excited/eager/antsy to wait to post this up. I hope my fellow writers can forgive me the transgression. :(  There’s a ton to go over in this post, so I’m going to skip a few things and save them for later (mainly going over all the individual fixtures). We’ll go ahead and get started with some January transfer business, and move from there.

Transfers:

For what it’s worth, the BSN/S don’t have formal January transfer windows, and in fact the transfer window is open almost the entire season. Still, January is a mental thing for me, and that’s where the bulk of the activity took place. First, the outbounds:

Carlos Roca was a terrible player that I’d be holding onto simply in case I was desperate for a winger. Ultimately though, my needs never became great enough to justify his continued presence, and he was promptly released. Danny Ball was a player I’d inherited, and was the deposed manager’s last signing before his sacking. Ball was on an extraordinarily ridiculous wage (something like 600 a week), and had vastly under-performed as wingback all year long. I was quite glad to be rid of him, as BSP side Alfreton took him off my hands.

Lastly, Frankie Raymond was a player I really would like to have kept, but I simply couldn’t meet his wage demands. With him on a pay-as-you-play non-contract, it was only a matter of time before someone sniped him out from under me. Fellow BSN side Solihull Moors were able to afford him, and signed him up.

As for the intakes, I was looking for a striker to replace the underwhelming Asante, and a wingback to replace the equally underwhelming Danny Ball. I’d say both efforts were successful:

Alex Jones was an absolute monster following this signing, and went on to score 18 goals in 20 appearances. He’s probably the best player to ever wear Rebel Red, and might be my best bit of business ever.

Not quite the revelation that Alex Jones was, but he ended up being far superior to anything Ball accomplished. I was quite pleased with his performances on the whole.

Brought in to replace Frankie Raymond, more on him later.

Run to the end:

You’ll have to forgive me, but I’ve lapsed in my journalistic responsibility and forgot to take a screenshot of our fixtures before heading off to work. In light of that, I can give you a brief rundown: Our form took a bit of a dip, and we lost a few winnable games before picking back up at the end. We were very briefly involved in the title hunt, but any remote hopes were quickly squashed when we blew a 1-0 lead against leaders Southport, and lost 1-2. However, with three games left to play, I received this:

The playoff picture at that moment looked as thus:

A few games later, and things looked largely the same. Southport managed to claim the title, despite Stalybridge leading almost the entire way. On the other end, Guisley snuck into the playoffs on the last day:

Given our number two seed, we were expectantly drawn against Northwich Victoria for the right to compete in the title. Unfortunately, and by some absolutely ludicrous scheduling, we ended up playing them AWAY on a single day’s rest. This could get ugly…

Brilliant, utterly brilliant. Despite most of the players being only in the 80% range (or less), and playing away in a very hostile Victoria Stadium, we somehow managed to put up one of our best performances of the year. While this may prove the scheduling wasn’t an issue, I still plan on writing a very angry letter to the FA.

Mercifully, we had a full week to prepare (and recuperate) for the critical second leg. Given our positive performance away, I was hopeful we’d do even better at home:

Eh, not great, but it was enough to see us through. Thanks to a Ben Sayer penalty, we jumped out to a 1-0 (4-0) lead before giving up two rather soft goals, and allowing Northwich to save a little bit of face. Still, we were through to the final on a 4-2 aggregate win!

At this point, I was daring to believe. I know I rambled and raved about not being ready for promotion, but when you find yourself in the playoff final, you can’t help but dream of victory. When I learned that Guisley had knocked out Stalybridge (completing their shocking collapse), I was even more excited. This was a team that barely even made it into the playoffs, this was a team I could actually beat. When game day game, I was giddy with nervous excitement.

Things began smoothly enough, some nice defensive stops followed by some slick attacking play. We finally got our chance with a corner:

Brilliant! Alex Jones heads in a Sayer corner, to give us a 1-0 advantage! We’re a fairly attacking team, but our defense had been in fine form, and I had faith we might be able to hold onto this slim margin. That is until Dave Evans revealed he had other plans. In the most boneheaded tackle I’ve ever seen, he gave Guisley a penalty right before halftime:

Needless to say, they converted with ease. We went into the locker room disappointed, but eager. Evans was promptly benched, and the team was given a «Keep it up» pep talk. We took to the second half with a vengeance, and were easily the more attacking of the two teams. We had Guisley on the back foot, but just weren’t able to make the shots count. Despite our best efforts, we were heading into extra time.

Another sub (Ben Sayer was thoroughly exhausted), and we went back to it. This time the exhaustion became evident, and neither team was able to generate much of anything the entirety of extra time. A lot of drab midfield play, and a few half-hearted attacks meant we were heading to penalty kicks. Things progressed smoothly enough, as we traded goals back in forth. Finally, with Guisley up 5-4, Stuart Ashton stepped up to try and convert our 5th attempt and extend the PKs.