Matt the Shrimp
aka Harry Potter
We weren't lucky in League Two. If anything, we were unlucky - losing momentum at just the wrong time; picking up needless bookings and losing key players for important games...[b said:Quote[/b] (southendpier @ Nov. 01 2006,13:15)]I believe you get lucky in cup runs maybe the odd game but the point of a league is that luck is minimal. How can you be lucky, home and away for two seasons?
League Two was a poor league with four pretty good sides in it when we got promoted. The rest were (to be frank) pretty sh*te - a dour Northampton town were perhaps the best of the play-off bunch; but Lincoln were hoofers and Macc Town weren't far behind.
That's proved by the fact that we went up last season, Swansea ought to have gone up last season but bottled it, and all of Swansea, Yeovil and Scunny are in the top 6 of League One this season.
So we had no, nor needed any, luck to get out of League Two. We deserved it.
But last season, after capitalising on a brilliant September & October (no luck there - just a fantastic run of results by a side riding the crest of a wave), we got lucky. We were lucky that Forest couldn't sort their act out, eventually sacking Megson. We were lucky that Swansea lost Lee Trundle to injury - thereby stopping their promotion charge in its tracks. We were lucky that Huddersfield have a pretty limited manager in Peter Jackson (sorry, I just don't rate him). We were lucky that Gary Johnson had left one really good side (Yeovil) to take over a big but cr@p side (Bristol City). We were lucky that the one side who ought to have really featured in the promotion race got hugely distracted by the League Cup (Doncaster) and another got distracted by the FA Cup (Brentford) and then had to sell their main asset (DJ Campbell). We were lucky that Sodje fell out with Webby and came and joined us.
It's the ying and yang of football. We were horrifically unlucky to be landed with Ronnie Whelan and Alvin Martin in succession. The pendulum swung back in our favour last November and December. We were totally abject for two months... and yet no one took advantage. We bagged 4 points in almost two months - yet we never dropped out of the top 6. Then a freakishly good display by Darryl got us a win at Hartlepool that we completely didn't deserve - and the bandwagon was back on the rails. Tell me that that wasn't a lucky night for us?!
Seasons can turn on a single match like that. Who knows, we might yet beat United next week... and our season could get the shot in the arm it desperately needs.
I sure bloomin' hope so - since we're beginning to look desperately short of options now...
Matt