Why the likes of Crawley and FC United are bad for Non-League Football

It would seem that the only people who were behind Crawley Town in their recent FA Cup tie at Old Trafford were the Reds fans themselves and employees of ITV.

ITV aren’t known for their brilliant football broadcasts, quite the opposite in fact, and completely misjudged public reaction when claiming that every neutral would be cheering the West Sussex side on. How very wrong could you be?

Crawley achieved the impossible and somehow got most of the country supporting Manchester United for a change. That’s quite something.

I guess their fans will point towards their ‘success’ and claim that rivals are jealous of them and to an extent, they’re probably right. They’re currently four points behind AFC Wimbledon in the Blue Square Bet Premier with six games in hand so come next August; they should be playing league football. Their tie against the other Red Devils didn’t pose the familiar part-time non-leaguers against the pros. It wasn’t even a nice story; most of that Crawley squad have tasted league football before at one stage or another. Sergio Torres dropped two divisions to join Crawley from Peterborough United and captain Pablo Mills has played in the Championship for Derby County.

Teams with money are often frowned upon by fellow non-league clubs. As I said, partly because of jealousy but I think the overriding feeling is that they’re not earning it. Another team much like Crawley are Fleetwood Town. They have risen through the non-league pyramid at quite a speedy rate with a lot of thanks to a wealthy owner.

All too often in the past we have seen non-league clubs going under, some feel the need to try and compete with the likes of Crawley and Fleetwood and that just isn’t sustainable. If their big money owners decide to pull out at any stage, it’ll most likely be it for the club. If that wasn’t enough, Crawley also have one of the most hated men in non-league football as their manager – Steve Evans. Evans is the man that took Boston United to the brink of bankruptcy after being convicted of conspiring to cheat the public revenue, understating player wages and bonus payments. Let’s just hope Evans has learnt from his very big mistakes.

Another team I have no warmth towards are FC United of Manchester - the club born because of Malcolm Glazer. I’ve no idea why they created the club. I’ve heard of several reasons but they’re all quite frankly, rubbish. They say they want their own club but I wonder how many of those fans actually visited Old Trafford on a regular basis.

There are several clubs in and around the Manchester area who are begging for support. Hyde, now a club stripped of all its integrity, are one. The club accepted a cash sum from Manchester City to keep the club running, and very handily dropped the United from their name for their 125th anniversary. They also changed their colours from red to white and play in a blue changed strip...

Stalybridge Celtic are not far from Hyde and again, are a team that with a bit more support could easily sustain a Blue Square Premier side. Unfortunately, rather than helping support clubs like these and putting their money back into the non-league game, they decided to start their own club up. Very clever.

When the Glazers ultimately leave Manchester United, will those fans go back to Old Trafford? If so, we’ll probably see yet another non-league club struggling financially.

It’s a shame that both Crawley and FC United caused cup upsets this year as it would have meant a lot more had it been other non-league clubs that people have respect for.

Let’s just hope that AFC Wimbledon manage to stave off the advances of Crawley and finish top of the Blue Square Bet Premier – now that would be a nice story.