Football Season Guide

Fleetwood start the season aiming to do what Crawley did last season - namely bulldozing their way to promotion without making any apologies to anyone and putting their money where their mouth is. The Cod nearly made it to the Football League at the first attempt last season but the then newcomers were thrashed by AFC Wimbledon 8:1 on aggregate in the play-offs. While this was a harsh lesson and a slap in the face, the owners of the club only took it as an additional motivation and bankrolled an expansive signing spree with the only objective for next year being automatic promotion. Micky Mellon will be relishing the chance to improve on last season's superb campaign and will feel even better equipped to do it this year. The most impressive signings have been up front where Richard Brodie and Andy Mangan arrived from Crawley and Wrexham respectively. Brodie, the most expensive player ever signed by a Conference club, did not meet the lofty expectations at Crawley last season, but is now back closer to his Yorkshire home and feels ready to steamroll the division, scoring 30+ goals, like he did at York in the season before last. Mangan was one of the best link-up strikers last season and could provide the perfect foil for him but one should not forget that superb strikers like Magno Vieira, Gareth Seddon and George Donnelly are still in the squad too and the battle for the places up front will be fierce. Midfield looks really strong too with Keith Briggs lured away from Kidderminster. Paul Edwards is the best left-back in the division and another shrewd capture. Another big plus for Mellon was that all the transfer business was done by the first week of June and he had a full pre-season with all the new players with enough time to blend. All this points to a really strong title challenge and Fleetwood should be considered a hot favourite, even with all the pitfalls that such a tag entails to any team in any division, especially to one that is notoriously tough to get out of.