1:00pm Tuesday 16th March 2010
By Stephen Lowe
AT the start of the season to stay in League Two and improve our final points total was on the agenda of every Stanley fan.
Then came the bombshell of the tax bill and a pile of debt that seemed to spell the end of our club.
To survive became our biggest priority and anything else would be a bonus. Then a few strange things happened – the club accepted Ilyas Khan’s money and the team just kept on winning.
In the space of four months we have seen a complete turnaround in expectations at the club.
Hovering outside the play-offs for a few weeks and some big teams put to the sword meant that almost all Stanley fans (me included) started to look up the table for the first time in our short Football League history.
But as with all things Stanley, if we are to have any chance of promotion we will of course make it very hard for ourselves.
We finally hit the 50-point mark with the victory over Barnet this weekend and those three points were anything but straight forward as Ian Dunbavin was sent off and the Londoners took the lead through the resulting penalty.
Cue the Stanley fightback and, despite a rare penalty miss from Phil Edwards, the Reds returned home from the capital once again with all three points, thanks to an excellent header from Edwards and a sweet strike from Billy Kee.
So that’s 50 points on the board and the recognised safety total required for League Two reached. And so to tonight’s game, a tough encounter with promotion chasing Rotherham. When the big teams come for a night match at the Accrington, the atmosphere created by the Ultras is electric and the games are rarely dull.
I predict… actually I have given up predicting as even Mystic Meg would have a hard time keeping up with all things Stanley!
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