Football Season Guide

Rochdale have been a stable League One club for well over a decade, having suffered only one relegation in the last ten years. This is quite remarkable for such a small club and the Dale have received a lot of praise for the way they have been run, with the foundations of everything laid down by their now former manager Keith Hill. The man currently in charge is former player Brian Barry-Murphy, who has so far stayed true to Hill's possession-based philosophy, with this being enough for the Dale to stay up last time around. However, the young manager now faces by far the biggest challenge of his managerial career so far, as the Dale have seen a summer exodus of players, while hardly bringing anyone in. The most notable players to have left are midfielder Callum Camps and striker Ian Henderson, with the latter being the Dale's skipper and a player synonymous with their rise in the last decade, having been at the club for seven years and having been their top scorer almost by default in nearly all of his campaigns with the Dale, including the previous one. The squad that Barry-Murphy has at his disposal is much weaker in both numbers an quality compared to the one he had available last time around and it seems that the pandemic had struck the Dale particularly bad. As already noted, they are used to defying the odds but it is hard to see the player exodus that they had during the summer as anything but a bridge too far.