Football Season Guide

Chesterfield are coming from a rather successful season, which saw them make the play-offs, only to be crushed by eventual play-off winners Preston in their semi-final clash. The Spireites could have hardly expected more from what was their season of return to the third tier, but the general consensus is that it would be optimistic to expect them to continue their upward trend from the previous two seasons. Things started going wrong for them right after the end of the previous season, as their highly-rated manager Paul Cook has left them to join Portsmouth, while things became worse and worse as time elapsed, as the Spireites have lost no less than three key players in the likes of Gary Roberts, Sam Clucas and Tendayi Darikwa. To make things worse, they have failed to bring in adequate replacements for the departed players, with the sole player to have joined so far being Sylvan Ebanks-Blake, who joins from Preston North End. Cook's replacement will be Dean Saunders, who will be looking to rebuild his reputation after his previous two managerial stints, at Wolverhampton and Crawley, both resulted in his teams being relegated from their respective divisions. Despite the relegations, Saunders is a proven League One manager who is capable of making his sides pretty hard to beat, but one big question regarding his appointment is whether the players will manage to quickly adapt to his footballing philosophy, as his preferred long ball style is much different to Cook's, who was a fan of counter-attacking.