IT has been a remarkable season for Flixton FC manager Paul Wright.
The man they call "Fester" - due to his likeness to a certain Addams Family character - has worked wonders at the club, leading them to promotion to the North West Counties Division One.
Not only that, but Flixton also won the Division Two Cup, reached the semi-finals of the North West Counties League Cup and the final of the Manchester Premier Cup, beating local rivals Trafford for the first time in 10 years along the way.
To cap it all off Wright deservedly snatched the Division Two manager of the year award from under the nose of his former assistant - FC United of Manchester manager Karl Marginson.
All this despite the fact he was not even supposed to be managing the club this season.
He told SUM Sport: "At the start of the season I didn't even expect this to be fair.
"I only came here three years ago for 10 games to help the club out and at the start of the season they got in Darren Sheridan because I didn't want to do the job anymore.
"But he got back into pro football so I took the manager's job again.
"At the start of the season we only had two weeks to get a side together and we had a slow start.
"But round about November we had a meeting and decided to go for it, to make a push to see if we could get promoted."
In the second half of the season, Flixton embarked on an incredible run of results, going 16 games undefeated throughout the final three months of the season.
Eventually, the Valley Road side finished just eight points behind champions FC United, who had been expected to run away with the division.
And although Wright is happy about the direction Flixton are moving, he is also annoyed about the
He said: "It annoys me that FC United get so much publicity when they haven't actually done that well with the money they have.
"They only won the league by eight points and if there had been another 10 games to go, I don't know if they would have because they were slipping towards the end of the season.
"The problem is that they claim to be about grassroots football but they're paying a chief executive and a secretary big wages and they're getting into merchandising.
"They're bringing in players from higher divisions who are just falling on money, but hopefully we'll be able to challenge them from the start next season."
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