Money Still Talks In League One
Science Makes Quality Count
High Time For Transparency
Terriers Turning Bark Into Bite
Counting The Cost Of Late Goals
Momentum Key For Tangerines
Blackwell And The Blame Game
Time Running Out For Saints
The Curious Case Of Les Parry
Robins Remind Us Of Bigger Picture
Addicks Should Brace For A Collapse
Randomness Brings No Joy For Roy
Dressing Up The Case For Stanley
What now for Notts County?
The case for the City title assault
Adkins gets our gaffer gong
Gorillas in the Mestalla
Shame puts Martinez on the rocks
Bright times with Poyet in motion
Panic breaks a familiar pattern
Dealing with a media darling
Magilton making the difference
Who can keep Mariners afloat?
Why more is less for Ronnie
Ferguson redresses the balance
The power of beliefs and mind games
Curing the crisis of confidence
A world beater in the making
Scott looking for capital gains
Humility gets the better of McCall

BASEMENT SHAPING UP FOR A LOTTERY

One of my personal highlights of the last 12 months working for Bettingzone was the opportunity to interview Keith Hill a couple of weeks before the season began.

I found the Rochdale boss to be good-natured and engaging, and I came away from his office at Spotland with a much better understanding of how the League Two campaign might shape up.

Thinking back to that conversation, it now seems crystal clear that, from a punting point of view, Hill had a firm grip on the section, the standards that would be set and where most clubs slotted into the overall scheme of things, even if he wasn't particularly conscious of it at the time.

With regards to his own team, he was eager to play down any possibility that they might overcome back-to-back play-off disappointments by going up automatically at the third attempt.

"If you're asking me whether I'd take the play-offs now, then the answer would be yes," was his emphatic response to a question I was coming to.

However, his demeanour belied his words. There were two of us in that room who were clearly confident that Rochdale could go one better this time around but Hill knew that no great purpose could be served by talking up their chances.

Besides, the mere mention of it was an opportunity to remind everyone of the financial restrictions under which his club were operating.

It's an easy point to overlook but, in terms of playing budget, a play-off place for the third season running would have been an incredible achievement, so that was always where he was going to set his target publicly.

Nonetheless, I got the picture and ignored his remarks when tipping up the Lancashire outfit for promotion at 9/2 in my League Two ante-post preview a week later.

The value of Dale's price was the only real conclusion I drew at the time but there was another massive pointer from Hill that I neglected to follow up.

Naturally, the surreal goings-on at Notts County had dominated our conversation to begin with but when I asked Hill who would pose the biggest threat in the promotion race, he let out the name of Bournemouth without a moment's hesitation.

When pressed on the matter, he was far from categorical with his reasons, but then the response had been instinctive rather than rational.

In a nutshell, he simply believed the Cherries had a group of players who were too good for this level and early indications were enough to suggest Eddie Howe could do the job required to get them up.

Bournemouth were 3/1 for promotion at the time. They topped the table with a 3-0 win at Bury on the opening day and never once left the automatic promotion places from that point onwards, so it probably wasn't a bad bet!

At that point, I probably should have walked out because Hill had said everything he needed to say.

Instead, he spent the next ten minutes looking down an ante-post coupon politely paying lip service to the credentials of every name as he read them out one by one.

And so it was that the League Two season should have been wrapped up early just like that interview as Notts County, Bournemouth and Rochdale occupied the top three positions, clinching promotion with weeks of the campaign to spare.

Of course, it wasn't obvious at the time that the promotion race would create such a sense of inevitability around itself and nor should it have been. That's not what you come to expect from the basement.

Even in the wake of last season's carnage when a total of 74 points were deducted from four teams, League Two still managed to uphold its excellent level of competitive balance with only the Championship providing a less predictable contest.

However, this time it transpired that nobody else really wanted to go up when you consider the team who finished in fourth position could only muster a paltry 73 points - the second lowest total since the English game adopted the system of three points for a win.

Indeed, as we take this opportunity to reflect on the campaign from the wider perspective, it's plain to see that next season promises to be one of the tightest divisions we've seen for many years, providing certain clubs can stave off the threat of administration and points deductions.

When you look at the 18 teams who remain from this campaign, you cannot really identify a club on the rise that might be building-up to take it by storm next term and there would appear to be no outstanding candidate coming down from League One either.

Meanwhile, Stevenage and Oxford have got to improve on the standards set by Darlington and Grimsby, so as it stands we have a situation where every team should be double-figures in the ante-post market.

It might not do much for the entertainment level but it can only be good news for punters.

It's just a shame we won't have Keith Hill to run the rule over it in our pre-season coverage once again. He'll be too busy getting himself accustomed to what might happen a division higher up.

For the record, my match betting activity in League Two this season generated a small profit of 5.87 points from an outlay of 149 points.