Better The Devils You Know?

By BoroGuide

It’s true. A week can be a long time in football and Stevenage went a long way to proving that last week. Let’s not focus on the defensive white flag we fluttered in bidding our farewell to August at Grimsby. No, we’ll bask in the lovely warm glow of what we hope is the beginning of Boro’s Indian Summer instead. By the time Matt Godden got himself on par with Fraser Franks, Ben Kennedy and Tyler Walker in the scoring charts, Hartlepool United were punch drunk. It was clinical enough, alright, but have we now found a winning formula to run with?

Crawley Town are going to be the first to test out this particular formula. It’s perhaps a little too much to ask that we rack up six goals for the second week on the trot. But, if you’re going to pick your moment, the 22nd meeting against a side you first met in a tinpot competition back in 1988 is the one. Yep, the Red Devils are disturbingly familiar to us here thanks to our shared histories. And they’re close to knocking Grays out of our top 10 most played opponents. We shade it on the head-to-head, but recent times haven’t been kind.

 

Stevenage v Crawley Town: Taking It As Red…

Stevenage v Crawley Town: Better the Red Devils you know...

Boro’ come into this fixture looking for a first win against Crawley Town in three punts. In fact, we were both in League One and 2014 was just appearing on the horizon when we last claimed the bragging rights. Only Chris Day now survives from that day, by which we mean everyone else in Boro’s squad of 16 has moved to pastures new. Not that they’re dead. Since the Red Devils came back to League Two, however, they have a perfect two-in-two record against us. And yet it didn’t stop them ending the campaign looking up at us in the table.

This season, it all looked rosy enough for Crawley Town to begin with. After four games, the club were tickling the soft underbelly of Morecambe at the summit of the division. Two games on, however, and the Red Devils are only one point and two places above us. If things go tickey-boo for us this weekend, Boro’ could move anywhere from 7th to 14th. By the same measure this early on in affairs, lose and we fall as far as 23rd if Yeovil have a ball against… Hartlepool at home. But none of it matters in early September fer chrissakes.

Boro’, barring Tom Conlon, are back to full throttle now that our wanderers are back from Jamaica and, er, Northern Ireland. It’s not as if Darren Sarll has much cause to tweak his team, though. You don’t take an axe to a tree that’s been bearing you lush fruit, so why change a line-up that pulled Hartlepool’s collective short trousers down and served up six of the best? And yet, we’re going to reserve our judgement until the full time whistle on Saturday afternoon. Football’s a funny old game and it’s not afraid to make fools of people.

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Stevenage v Crawley Town. Now for the pretty pictures and League Two stats from Kick Off:

Stevenage v Crawley Town - Stats Stevenage v Crawley Town - Stats

BoroGuide’s Crawley Town club profile – what’s it gonna look like with a chimney on it?