The Triumph of Mediocrity

Who'd have credited it?  Stevenage will be playing League One football next year.  Isn't that insane?

Black-eyed misery-guts gaffer,  Graeme Westley
takes the plaudits of the Stevenage fans who
booed his return to the club a few years ago.

They will be playing league games against both Sheffield teams next season!  They are also going to be hosting former Premier League Charlton Athletic!  It's been an incredible journey for Stevenage (to coin a phrase from The X-Factor), made all the more remarkable because it has been overseen by one of the most overrated managers in football.  No, not Peter Taylor.  The other one - the dead-eyed Graeme Westley.

During his short, ruinous tenure at Rockingham Road, and over the course of numerous games against Stevenage, Westley's "quality" was always the same.  Grim, negative football, followed up if that fails, with negative, grim football.  Pinch a goal and 10 across the back.  The sort of well-drilled stubborness that the likes of Mark Cooper can only aspire to. 

And Chris Beardsley joins Craig Westcarr in the third tier of football, only a couple of years after both were deemed surplus to Poppies requirements by Cooper. D'oh!

And what odds on Crawley emulating Stevenage's instant progress through League Two next season?  I suppose that will depend on whether their mysterious, foreign backers continue to be interested, or they find some other way to spend their legitimate business profits.