Morning All, it’s the 1^st June, the World Cup starts in 2 weeks, but more importantly our fixtures will be published.

I haven’t done an update since the end of the season, a month ago and to be honest there hasn’t been much coming out of the football club recently apart from the announcement that Colin Kazim-Richards was confirmed as our manager going forward into next season – and after the performing the great escape he deserves at least the chance to see what he can do next season, with Julian Gray and Jamie Day as his assistants. They also released the details of the season tickets – I was surprised that there was no increase from last season having seen other clubs increase theirs, so well done to the club for this – let’s hope all the existing season ticket holders renew and more of the casual supporters decide to purchase them.

The club released their retained list and I think everyone could have listed the players who were not going to be retained for next season but however there we a couple of surprises I must admit – there are currently 6 players in discussions with the club over new contracts and as yet no details have been published on the progress of these.  Obviously there will be new players being signed but again apart from the various rumours again no information has been published. It’s the same with the new kit for next season, we still are waiting for this to be released, we’ll just have to bide our time and wait for the club to release all the information.

In the terms of travelling next season we now know who the 6 new teams who are in League 2 – Rotherham, Northampton, Exeter and Port Vale all relegated from League 1 with York City and Rochdale promoted from the National League – only one new place to visit for me, York City’s new stadium. The fixtures are due out on Thursday 25^th June so we will know then what our travelling is going to be like over the season. At least we can say that we will be able to run supporters coaches there and back on the day to all games subject to numbers travelling having lost the longest trip to Barrow, and were fortunate not to see Carlisle promoted.

The FA have a nightmare situation in the Caraboa Cup with a preliminary round having to be played due to 9 premier teams in European Competitions – there are 3 northern teams York City, Rochdale and Tranmere Rovers which we will have to play one of them in a southern section of the draw – which is supposed to be regionalised in the first two rounds. The first round of this Cup is over the weekend of the 7^th/8^th August which has changed as it was usually as a midweek fixture, so the prelim round will probably be the previous weekend 1/2^nd August – which again could affect our pre-season schedule.

We had our first meeting with the club on Wednesday 27^th May as our part of the Fans Advisory Board – it was extremely productive and very positive going forward – Owner Raphael Khalili, Tom Allman and Sam Gadsdon were in attendance from the club. The minutes of this meeting will be shared with all supporters and these will be put on a new FAB website as well as the Clubs Official website. Our next meeting with the club will be before the season starts.

The new Crawley Town Fan Advisory Board website is www.crawleytownfc-fab.co.uk which is now up and running but will have more information added as time goes by.

The pitch renovation has been completed and we can confirm that the grass is already growing within a week of the top surface being removed.

Of the players released – Anthony Papadopulous has signed for Dagenham and Redbridge, Ryan Sandford for Dartford.

Of other former players – Ronan Darcy released by Wigan, Khalali Lolos put on the transfer list by Peterborough, Will Wright released by Swindon, Max Watters released by Barnsley, Nick Tsaroulla contract extended by Notts County, Enzio Bolderwijn has signed for Bath City and former Striker John Akinde to Folkstone Invictor.

Former manager Rob Elliot has left Gateshead and been appointed the new head coach of Carlisle United replacing Mark Hughes.

Finally on a sad piece of news, Ivor Blunden a long-time supporter of the club passed away on Thursday 28^th June – our sincere condolences go to his family and friends at this sad time – Ivor was a regular traveller on our coaches to away games for many years until the travelling go to much and was only then attending home matches sitting in the West Stand.

As you know we did a “Guess the number of points” that Crawley would attain over the season and the total of goals scored as the tie-break – as you can probably realise no one was anywhere near the correct answer of 40 points and 44 goals – not the season we were expecting, we are not announcing a winner. So to be fair to those who entered the competition, if you want, we are offering your money back in terms of a £20.00 away travel voucher which can be used at any time over the season on one of our coaches. Just let me know.

The Red Devils Diary that was produced during the second half of last season for the home matches will be published again next season. It has been one of the successes achieved last season – where the club were losing money on match day programmes in the past when the RDD actually made a profit – which shows what can be done if supporters are willing to help.

The World Cup – it’s likely that some matches are going to be shown in REDZ, so once announced we will keep you informed with the information about dates and times.

We will do further updates during the pre-season – But as we know from the past, as soon as we send out an update, the club issues some additional news on the website and social media.

Alain