Lower League Summer – League One

Brentford’s Griffin Park home

The Other Contenders

From the outside looking in, probably the most impressive summer transfer work was done by Brentford. They added Walsall’s Will Grigg, the scorer of 20 goals last season, Swindon Town captain Alan McCormack, and slightly surreally, Javi Venta, a right back who was in Spain’s provisional 2006 World Cup squad, signed from Villarreal. The signing of Grigg strikes me as particularly impressive – as a pacey and creative forward he’s in a similar mould to Bradley Wright-Phillips, who joined Brentford on loan for the last three months of last season but never scored regularly. Despite the loss of impressive young keeper Simon Moore to Cardiff, Brentford should be contenders for the League One title.

Tranmere’s excellent first half to last season can be attributed to investment in young talent, but the same can be said about their vastly inferior second half of the season. Seemingly as a deliberate counter, during the summer they’ve invested heavily in experience. Akpo Sodje scored seven goals in the first half of last season for mid-table Preston and six goals in the second half of the season for relegated Scunthorpe.

Ryan Lowe, while having a poor season at MK Dons last year, scored 16 or more for four successive seasons previously, while left-back Evan Horwood was credited with 11 assists for relegated Hartlepool despite the side only scoring 51 goals.

Preston North End have added Kevin Davies – a man as synonymous with Bolton as Nat Lofthouse – to their forward line, and announced that title-winning pest Iain Hume will be kept by the club following his season-long loan at Doncaster. When added to Stuart Beavon (an all-rounder who has been most criticised for his lack of physicality) and Joe Garner, a link-up forward who in the second half of the season seemed to be back near the impressive form earlier in his career at Carlisle, Preston have some outstanding forward options. It’s unusual for a League One side to have that level of depth, and should make them very dangerous in the forthcoming season.

Although Bradford’s most notable star Nahki Wells has been linked with a move away from Valley Parade, his strike partner James Hanson will almost certainly remain at the club. They’ve made some interesting additions – Mark Yeates, a winger impressive in the Championship for Colchester, Middlesbrough and Watford has joined from the Hornets, while Jason Kennedy, the kind of combative but technical player to be expected from the Middlesbrough academy, has been added from Rochdale.

When you add in their League Cup experiences last year, winning games they logically shouldn’t have won, and putting in an impressive late run to the playoffs when all seemed lost, there’s a more than decent chance of Bradford doing what Swindon did last season, and challenging for promotion in their first year in League One.