Football Season Guide

Chesterfield are coming from a season during which they flirted with relegation but managed to avoid it after Danny Wilson took over and steadied the ship. Wilson, who is the most experienced League One manager in terms of the number of matches in which he took charge, now has a tough job ahead of him, as the Spireites have been on a downward spiral as a club over the last two years and have once again lost some of their most important players in Lee Novak, Oliver Banks and Chris Herd, while club stalwart Drew Talbot has left after seven years with the club, due to losing his regular starting place under Wilson. The big question for Chesterfield going into the new season is where the goals will come from now, with Novak gone and Sylvan Ebanks-Blake being out of form for a while now and at an age when one must wonder if he will get it back. Chesterfield have signed two new strikers in Kristian Dennis, who signs from Stockport, and Ched Evans, who is by far the most controversial signing that any League One side has made this year, due to the stigma surrounding his legal troubles. Evans, whose signing caused one of the club's sponsors to stop its association with Chesterfield, could prove to be a brilliant signing if he manages to reach anything close to the level had when he last played professional football but, knowing that this was four years ago, we can only speculate on how good he can actually be. All of the other signings the Spireites have made during the summer lack League One experience and have it all to prove, but, despite the number of departures, it needs to be noted that they have still kept the core of their last season's squad together.