Football Season Guide

Southend's 2017/18 season can be divided into two distinctive parts, as they battled against the drop under Phil Brown, but improved a great deal under Chris Powell, who took over in late January. It looked for a while that the renaissance under Powell could even lead to a play-off place, but their struggles under their previous boss left the Shrimpers with simply too big of a gap to bridge and they had to settle for a respectable 10th-placed finish. The Shrimpers have shown glimmers of promise in each of the previous two campaigns and will now be hoping to further improve. Given that their new manager took over in the second half of the previous season, tehre was little surprise that they were very active in the transfer marker during the summer, with several players who were regulars under Brown but not Powell allowed to leave. The departure of Josh Wright to Bradford is certainly a blow, but the Shrimpers saw Timothee Dieng go the other way as a like-for-like replacement. Sam Mantom has had his loan stay from Scunthorpe turned into a permanent deal, while Tom Hopper, Luke Hyam and Harry Lennon are all decent players at this level and likely starters for the Shrimpers. The squad therefore seems to be of quality similar to the last season's one and their fans will be hoping for the side to keep performing the way they have since being taken over by Powell.