Another reason why I hope we go up..

[Plymouth Gull]

..

so we don't have to witness those planks Evans & Raynor on the touchline again!! Or listen to their nonsense about how Crawley will be "punching above their weight, and fully deserve every good result they get."

Except, they won't. They will probably buy some players from L1 teams for £Â£Ã‚£Ã‚£Ã‚£ then piss this league too.

[Scott Brehaut]

The bubble will burst eventually - it always does!!

[basil75]

While money no doubt helps, it does seem difficult to spend your way out of this league.

The best players seem to have grown and developed with the clubs at this level and aren't for sale.

Just look at Northampton and Bradford - possibly the two most expensive squads in the division. Notts County managed it - but it looked like they might not for a while, but Crawley won't have the spending power they had at the start of the season.

And let's not forget are own glory talent purchase of the past - Leon Constantine - who was the L2 top goalscorer the year before we got him.

The difference with the conference is that most of the professional clubs are trying to spend their way out of it - therefore the one with the deepest pockets will win. All the other professional clubs, such as Darlington, Grimsby, Wrexham and Kidderminster are all quite unsettled and far from brilliant financially - so lack the advantage many clubs in L2 have over the big spenders.

[Scott Brehaut]

Nick is right though - it is a bloody great reason to be out of this league.

I f*****g hate Crawley Town!!

[HRG]

The amount of texts I sent to the radio that didn't get read out, I'm assuming because it would interfere with the non league media love in, I spent a bit.

Crawley are scum of the highest order.
Some fans recognise that the management duo are the w*nk stains on the bed sheets of life.
Others choose to ignore it and join the ranks of the former.

[ReadinGull]

HRG man, you should have spent the money on another Jar in B&L.

I had to work in Creepy Crawley for a while, the whole place is a dive, and i only got to see the nice bits.

The media was awash with that non-league cack, if we don't get to go up, i'll personally love to see them trip up, not get promotion, realise they have spent all the money, have to sell all their players, get a 10 pt deduction, booted out the league. I'll then go an see them at Didcot Town and mock them by glueing a quid to the floor int he away end...

[Stoke_Gull]

Personaly I would like to see Crawley in League 2 just so they could crash and burn and freefall down the leagues so in a few years they will be playing the Metropolitan Police in front of crowds of 150. There is however a rather interesting dilemma that they should face next season, namely that they will have to reval who is providing them with so much money. Crawley have yet to decalre who is funding them, their only answer is that it is a far eastern consortium who have taken a real interest in the football club. I think we all know that this is utter rubbish, the chairman of Crawley himself has said that he has never met the group in question. My powers of deduction suggest that there is something very dodgy going on behind the scenes at Crawley Town and the sooner it is brought into the open the better.

[Jerry]

I saw this posted on another forum which I reckon could well be correct.

"They've got enough funds sitting in the bank to last 3 years so it won't happen next season.

I reckon their mysterious investor was the late Bruce Winfield. I reckon he found out he was terminally ill, realised he couldn't take his money with him, and took as much out of his companies as he could and stuck them in the Crawley bank account. The reason for the mystery would have been as simple as Winfield not wanting to answer questions as to WHY he'd suddenly invested a fortune.

There are no middle eastern or Hong Kong or arab business men, it was Winfield. But the funds came in a lump rather than a yearly top up (again points to the terminally ill Winfield), those funds are finite, and eventually WILL be spent. Crawley are gambling on being sustainable by that point - which will never happen."

http://www.thefootballforum.net/index.p ... ge__st__20

[Plymouth Gull]

Yep, saw that aswell Jerry. Wouldn't surprise me in the slightest. 3 years of fun and then it'll all go wrong, for me.

I wouldn't mind it as much if it was a more likeable management duo!!

[ferrarilover]

Money alone gets you nowhere in L2, evidence Northampton for that. Giving it all the mouth about paying five grand a week, they're going down. It means nothing having pots of cash, especially the way they play, they'll be found out very quickly. Diving, cheating, time wasting, intimidating the officials, their name will soon get around the refereeing circuit (as if they don't read each others reports or, indeed, speak to one another).
They have spent all this money, yet they stand to just about nick past the one-hundred-and-something points amassed by Aldershot a couple of years ago. If they were really the L1 side they think they are, they would have done a damn sight better than they have this year.

Matt.

[basil75]

Apparently, not only did Bradford have a £1.5 million playing budget this year, but they managed to overspend it.

[Plymouth Gull]

Depends how you use it, though Matt. Crawley have already lured some L1 standard players to join them, Torres, Mills was a big player in L2.

If you offer them an offer they can't refuse, then they'll accept. Most players are only in it for the money these days, lets be honest. Say Crawley offer a player (lets say.. Jo Kuffour for example) £3k/4k per week, whereas he's on £2k at Bristol, he'll probably go there.

And thats the sort of player that can do well in this division, and will get you out of it.

[Gulliball]

Crawley will run out of money soon, that is a certainty. They'll have one or two seasons in the league and then drop right back down again because they haven't got the fan base to sustain the level of spending in this division.

Hopefully we never have to play them again.

[basil75]

Also, forget this rubbish about them having a good league 1 stadard squad - they don't.

They have a fantastic experienced conference squad - only a few of their players have ever established themselves as good league standard players. A lot of fantastic non league players, fail to cut it in L2. We've seen this first hand for ourselves.

I really didn't think they were that good when they played us, we were poor and were not n brilliant form at the time. - there's certainly been far better sides we've seen this season - they were nowhere near the standard of Bury, Chesterfield or Rotherham.

As I said earlier - in a league were everyones trying to spend their way out - such as the conference - it's easy to win by just having the deepest pockets. In L2 it takes a lot more than that as many of the teams are established, well developed and most importantly - settled.

[ferrarilover]

Bloody hell Baz, I didn't like to mention Bradford, given that I do feel for them a bit with their ground and the bastard who owns it, but if that little stat is anywhere near true (no reason to doubt you) it only goes to further demonstrate my point that money doesn't buy you anything in this division.

They are no better than Burton were the year they came up, and see where they are now. They're not big enough, good enough, or well enough supported to hack it in this division, let alone the division above.

Matt.