We’re just a couple of days away from the new season starting so I thought I’d look ahead to what we have in store. Rather than try to write one balanced season preview article I’ve split my personality in two and written one that is completely miserable and one that is much more positive. This is the happy clappy, pollyanna one, that looks towards the sunny side of the street and tries to squeeze the positives out of our current situation. The negative preview will be out later.

As an interesting aside, I’ve done this double preview approach over the last few seasons and the negative article usually gets about twice as many views as the positive one. So the next time you complain about how miserable the media are you should really blame yourself for clicking all that negative bile rather than the miserable people who write it!

Anyway, here’s your sunshine and kittens look at the forthcoming season!

We’ve made some good acquisitions this summer 

While we’re never going to be the Championship’s big spenders, I think we’ve done some pretty clever business this summer and I’m quietly confident that the players we’ve signed could really do well for us. Here’s a quick run down of the players we’ve brought in:

Will Boyle: The world’s oldest looking 26 year old is also the one that got away from our youth system. Back for a second spell and also with plenty of experience and looks to be a natural leader and decent character. Probably won’t set pulses racing but neither did Pearson or Lees and we all saw what they did for us last season.

David Kasumu: The defensive midfield dynamo that could be long-term successor to Hoggy and will also be the short-term successor to O’Brien. Puts in lots of running and makes lots of tackles. 

Connor Mahoney: An experienced Championship player that covers multiple positions where we’re short and most likely not on a huge wage. He never had a chance to kick on at Millwall but apparently had potential, so a new start at Town could be the making of him. 

Kyle Hudlin: Loaned out to Wimbledon for now but could be recalled in January if he does the business. Having a specialist big man to chuck on in the dying stages of games to cause a bit of chaos in the box seems like a great idea to me and I’m looking forward to seeing him come back and being an option to bring on when we need a different option on the bench. 

Yuta Nakayama: A Japanese international and highly rated in the Dutch top flight. We’ll have to see how that translates to the Championship but I’m quite optimistic.

Jack Rudoni: Scored lots of goals from midfield in a relegated side in League One, no reason why he can’t keep doing the same for Town in the Championship.

Tino Anjorin: Showed glimpses of talent despite not being fit last season. Fully fit and firing he could be a real secret weapon for Town.

The foundations of last season’s success are still in place 

As well as making some good additions to the squad, Town still have the fundamentals of the squad that got them to the playoffs last season. OK, Toffolo and O’Brien have gone but they were only two players and the success of last season was really built around a collective team effort rather than any one individual player. In fact, Toffolo spent a large part of last season off the boil where he struggled adapting to the wingback role and O’Brien was shunted out to the left wing during one of Town’s best runs towards the end of the season.

Keeping things tight at the back and being able to get our noses ahead in tight games was the way we did so well last season and there’s no reason we can’t do that again this season. We’ve still got Sorba Thomas to deliver set pieces. We’ve still got Nicholls in goals. We’ve still got Pearson and Lees at centre back (Colwill was good but he didn’t play that many games and we didn’t miss him in the games he was absent). Ward will still be up front to convert whatever chance we can lay on for him. 

There’s going to be some change about Town this season but it doesn’t have to be a fundamental change because the things that went well last season can be kept the same and we can build on them. 

Danny Schofield could be a great coach 

It was a bit of a surprise that Danny Schofield was given the head coach job when Carlos left but it emerged last night that he had been promised the role as a way of keeping him at the club when he was offered a head coach job in Europe shortly before the playoff final. Clearly the people within the club think very highly of him if they are willing to give him such a big responsibility as his first head coach role.

Nobody, including Schofield himself, knows if he will be up to the job at this moment. But there must be something about him for him to be offered this level of job without any other experience. Other coaches have to work their way up from the lower leagues and build experience over decades before they get a chance to manage in the Championship so to walk straight into your first job at this level suggests there must be something special about him.

We’ve got the best winger and the best keeper in the league 

I’ve touched upon this already above when I talked about how we’ve still got the fundamentals of the successful team from last season but I think that Lee Nicholls is the best keeper in the Championship and Sorba Thomas is the best winger. There are definitely other contenders for these titles and my blue and white tinted glasses might be clouding my vision but on their day both are certainly among the best this division has to offer.

Lee Nicholls was probably worth an extra 10 points to Town last season with the number of times he stopped certain goals and also his general game management helped us to see out results that might otherwise have gone the other way. Similarly, Sorba Thomas is the single most influential attacking player in the team. Just having him on the pitch completely changes everything for Town because all the other players know there’s the possibility of quality balls coming into the box both from open play and set pieces.

The Championship is still weak 

I think last year was one of the weakest Championship seasons in a very long time, mostly due to the financial strife many clubs were feeling. Things might not be quite so tight this season but there is still a bit less money sloshing around and therefore the general quality doesn’t seem to be quite so high. Therefore teams like Town, that don’t overspend, have a bit more a chance of competing at the top end of things. 

Obviously it’s still tough to go toe-to-toe with the relegated teams who have Premier League players and are able to prop up their wage bills with their parachute payments (rather than pay off debts) but I still think the league isn’t all that strong. Town have a pretty tricky first month or so, we’ll know more about the general quality of the league by mid-September but if we’re holding our own by then we should have nothing to fear.

Dean taking over from Phil puts us in a much better long-term position 

This final point isn’t about this particular season but more about the long-term future of the club. While the takeover isn’t complete, it seems inevitable that Dean Hoyle will become 100% owner again and the Phil Hodgkinson era will end in the near future. 

I know Dean Hoyle isn’t universally loved by Town fans but I’m someone that is grateful for what he has done for the club and I think he’s doing a relatively decent job. Whatever your opinion of him, I think most fans should agree we are better off with him in charge than with Phil who, after all his protestations to the contrary, ultimately didn’t actually have the money required to fund the ownership of a football club. Not that he should feel ashamed of that, few people do and as the saying goes, the best way to make a small fortune out of a football club is to start with a large one.