OK, the season hasn’t actually ended yet, but no-one seems to have told the players that, so now seems like as good a time as any to give an end of season review. Has the 2008/9 season been a success or a failure, a cause for optimism or despair? For me, the banner line to this site says it all – underachievement.

But that’s not to say it’s been a bad season. In some ways it’s actually been a relatively good one – we improved on last season’s position and never looked in danger of being relegated; had a decent cup run; and we’ve unearthed some good young players who can form the spine to build a team around. At the start of the season I predicted we’d finish 16^th, and we’ve spent much of the season around or slightly above that position, so the team seem to have exceeded my expectations slightly. But I’m left with a feeling that it could and should have been better and that the top ten would have been achievable with a bit more effort here and there.

The last few games are a great example. Plymouth, Charlton, Forest and Barnsley have all been struggling against relegation yet we only managed to pick up two points out of twelve purely because they looked hungrier. We should have been looking for six or seven points at least, even with injury problems and fixture congestion. This would’ve left us in the top half breathing down the necks of the top ten, giving us some encouragement for the start of next season and a much stronger bargaining position for transfer targets in the summer. It would have whetted the appetites of fans to get season tickets for next year and given the club some cash to bring those players in. Instead many are asking themselves why they should bother next year, especially given the economic uncertainty.

As soon as the team looked like it was safe the players seemed to switch off and go on holiday a month early. The problem with the above performances wasn’t so much that they were bad (Plymouth excepted) but gutless and disinterested. The players just looked like they felt they’d done their bit and deserved a rest.

And that’s been the problem throughout the season – we’d put a couple of decent games together then complacency would set in. The players would almost seem to say “We’ve played well for a few games so it won’t matter if we don’t turn up today”. The big games like Wolves and Birmingham we looked up for, and put in some really good performances, but approached ‘smaller’ games with indifference and a lack of respect for the opposition. Once again we’ve been incredibly inconsistent and still haven’t managed to win more games than we’ve lost.

The defence was a bit of an enigma all season. It looked composed and in control, then had a momentary lapse of concentration and the ball ended up in the net. They didn’t seem to be making more mistakes than other teams, but more of them seemed to be punished. Maybe we were just unlucky, but at least we had player-of-the-season Westwood behind then to make a few vital saves and without whom I really do fear we might have been staring relegation in the face once again.

The midfield was a weak point, and without the all-action style of Aron Gunnarsson (one of the buys of the season) it may just have been totally over-run. It was filled with a plethora of defensive minded players and didn’t really give the fans much to get excited about. The mentality instilled by Coleman in the team seemed to be one of ‘don’t lose’ rather than ‘win’, which is quite negative for me, but after the horrors of last season it’s the first step on the ladder of improvement. This attitude will have to change for next season if we want to improve again though.

This approach also didn’t help the attack, who struggled for service and support all season. A lack of width meant we had no attacking impetus at all in the early part of the season, and when this was rectified with Bell and Henderson in January we improved. Both had their season cut short through injury though and the attack looked impotent again thereafter. This really does need curing for next year.

However, I’m still disappointed at the return from Clinton Morrison and Freddy Eastwood. At the start of the season I thought they would be one of the strongest forward lines in the Championship, causing mayhem and scoring around 30-40 goals between them. In reality they managed just half that and a lot of defences seemed to be able to deal with their threat quite easily, some almost as if it were a training session. We’ve invested a lot of resources in these two so it may well be we’ll have the two of them up front again next season, concentrating instead on improving the service to them, but even so they’ll have to deliver a LOT more than they did this season.

Overall it’s been an average CCFC season without the typical end of season relegation drama. At times it promised much, only for that optimism to be cut short by the apathy that seems to infest this club regardless of who the players, manager and board are. A solid mid-table finish is an improvement (albeit a small one) on last year and if we can keep the better young players at the club in the summer and add a few more during the transfer windows, next season could set us up for a real promotion push the year after.

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