After the COVID years of promotion stagnation I am looking forward to this summer and the allocations that the Football Association are going to come up with. Who are they going to penalise for not bringing their ground up to specifications? Who are they going to penalise by moving them into a division that means a massive increase in travelling costs? It happens every season. Maybe they will come up with a new way to penalise professional clubs. I wait with baited breath.
Last night Exeter beat Barrow 2-1 to gain automatic promotion to League One. I was watching two other matches on my PC and iPad so I did not know until I watched the highlights this morning.
One of the matches I was watching was at Manchester City who beat Real Madrid 4-3 leaving us with the potential for a tense clash in the second leg. It was a great match to watch with other chances besides the goals. Seven goals is a crowd pleased and I am sure the television audience was entertained.
The other match I watched was the London Senior Cup Final between Hendon and Brentford B which finished 1-1 and went to penalties. With Brentford being one of my chosen clubs I was biased when I saw the Hendon team blast their first two penalties over the bar and out of the ground which meant replacing the ball for Brentford to score. At 2-0 to Brentford the next Hendon player passed the ball into the hands of the keeper (or the keeper saved it) so it only needed what happened. The next kick won the penalties 3-0 and technically the match 4-1.
Things seem to be going my way at the moment. I would like Burnley to survive but I gave up when they decided to lose to Norwich. Who DOES that? Since then a couple of wins have put them above Everton in the table. I am looking for either Everton or Leeds to drop keeping my short term Burnley boys in the Premier League. I will miss Sean Dyche who was part of the appeal but I still want the small town on the way up the Pennine hills to survive.
Exmouth Town managed to stay ahead of Mousehole and finishing second is, apparently, enough to gain promotion which will be to the Southern League Division One South.
All other things being equal, and I do have some separate ideas for next season, Exeter will replace the Cheltenham Town lads and Exmouth will replace Willand Rovers so I will need to pick two new teams for next season. This is one of my favourite times of year as the new groups of teams present themselves ready for the new contests to begin at various dates to be determined by the individual leagues themselves.
The Premier League will lose Norwich, Watford and either Everton or Leeds but not Burnley (I hope) and not Brentford who were only promoted via the playoffs. Brentford have impressed me this season although I had high hopes for them as their brand of football in the Championship was closer to the Premier League style than either of the other two.
HAPPY DAY!
Two of my teams have been promoted.
Arsenal can still finish fourth and qualify for the Champions League, Bournemouth can still be promoted. Weymouth I am pretty sure will be relegated but they may be reprieved because the league is short of numbers and Dover are already down.
The only other promotions are in the South Devon League which is outside the remit of this blog.
No comments:
Post a Comment