Football Season Guide

Colchester have been heavily flirting with relegation over the recent years, with their most dramatic escape coming last season, when they needed to deny Preston direct promotion in the final game of the season in order to stay up. The U's have been operating under heavy financial constraint over the recent years, and these constraints are the main reason for their constant inability to improve and become anything more than a side fighting to beat the drop. The current summer saw the U's being more active on the transfer market than they usually are, but it was once again a case of them not strengthening significantly. Matt Briggs, who spent a lot of time on loan with the club last season, has been snapped up on a permanent deal, while players such as Richard Brindley, George Elokobi and Joe Edwards arrive as like-for-like replacements for Sean Clohessy, Magnus Okuonghae and David Fox, who have all left. The U's do seem to be a touch stronger than they were last time around, as the newly-signed players look to be a bit better than the once that have left, at least on paper, but the problem is that there are not as many obviously poor sides in the league as was the case last season, meaning that the bar for survival could easily be set higher than it was last time around, meaning that the U's will be expected to struggle once again. They certainly have not made any fundamental improvements that would allow them to hope for anything more than plain survival, and securing League One football in the 2016/17 season would be seen as mission accomplished.