Tottenham Hotspur draw follows fixture announcement - football's return is imminent!

The announcement of the League Two fixtures for the new season confirmed football’s imminent return.
The People's Pension StadiumThe People's Pension Stadium
The People's Pension Stadium

With the draw for the Carabao Cup and the EFL Trophy groupings everything is positive. Whether we can watch the early matches remains doubtful although advice has been given regarding spectators at clubs playing at Step 3 and below.

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SEE ALSO Crawley Town fixtures 2020/21: The big matches to look out for | Crawley Town fixtures 2020/21John Yems’ men start the new season on September 5th with a home tie against Millwall in the Carabao Cup. We were successful in 2012 when the First Round draw took us to the New Den.

The scores were level at 90 minutes thanks to strikes by Hope Akpan and Nicky Adams and we swept them aside 4-1 on penalties.

Then, as now, the Lions were a Championship club as were Bolton Wanderers who we beat in the next round. Our liking for this competition was shown by the fact that it took the eventual winners, Swansea City, to edge us out in the Third Round.

We don’t hold such fond memories from our excursions in the Trophy but this season might be different. We start with a trip to Gillingham which won’t be easy but look forward to entertaining Arsenal U21 in October.

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Knowing how we put their fierce rivals Tottenham Hotspur to the sword in a pre-season friendly a few years ago I reckon we will gain some extra fans from North London for this fixture.

We have to wait until November for another chance to follow up our 2014 League Cup defeat of Ipswich Town.

We start our League Two campaign as we did in our first season in the EFL with a trip to Burslem to face Port Vale. It would be safest to view that encounter as difficult but who knows how any of our rivals will have coped with this most unusual pre-season.

I am looking forward to the October visit of Southend United to see if our fans can raise the roof as they did in the FA Cup tie at Roots Hall in 2018. The following month brings a visit to newcomers Harrogate Town hopefully with more success than we had at Salford City last term.

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The big one for me will be the New Year fixture against Bolton Wanderers at the University of Bolton Stadium.

They are League Two’s “big” club and our opponents when the season finishes. I expect them to gain promotion but they will recall they didn’t enjoy their last visit to Broadfield.

The Reds continued their preparations with a 2-2 draw at Tottenham Hotspur U23. They trailed until the 82nd minute when Ricardo German steered the ball home and just four minutes later Manny Adebowale scored following Jack Powell’s corner kick. The club also confirmed its belief in youth by offering Syzmon Kowalczyk a three-year contract as soon as he turned 17.