Grimsby Town

Last Season at a glance

15th in League Two

Was clearly a season of disappointment for the Mariners last time round. Having made the play offs in 2005-6, they'd have been expecting to build on that, but the appointment of Graham Rodgers as successor to Russell Slade turned out to be pretty disastrous.

A seven game losing streak, including a 4-0 hammering at the hands of ourselves, suggested that they could be heading for the Conference, but a 6-0 win away at local rivals Boston sparked a great run of form to leave Town comfortably in mid table.

Well we all know what Alan Buckley is like, having had half a season of him in charge at Spotland. And the Grimsby supporters will know far more than us about Buckley given that he is in his third spell in charge of the Mariners.

There's no doubting as to whether Buckley is a decent manager or not, the only question is whether he still has the hunger for the game. That was called into question during his spell at Spotland, especially when the first thing he did on being given the job was take himself on a three week holiday, despite having been out of work for several months.

But Grimsby fans seem pretty happy with him, and having steered them away from the drop zone last year, they'll be looking at him to continue that progress this time round.

Back in January, they were heading for the drop. Forget local derbies against Lincoln City, they were looking up the directions for Gainsborough Trinity, and there was a very real prospect of being three divisions below Scunthorpe.

But Alan Buckley certainly steadied things at Blundell Park, and if we expect ourselves to have a better season due to form in the latter stages of 2006-7, then Grimsby have every right to expect the same. Their last sixteen matches brought a total of thirty points.

So why shouldn't that continue this time round? The squad is pretty much the same, and the departures aren't exactly catastrophical. Croft may well have been a Grimsby legend, but it was time for him to move on, and whilst Michael Reddy might well be the best player in the division on his day, his day was two seasons ago, and he will only be missed in the treatment room.

Well it's alright pointing out that they haven't let anyone go of any note, but on the flip side of that, they've not exactly signed anyone who breaking out the champagne for.

Jamie Clarke we know about obviously, and he'll do a job for Grimsby no doubt about it, but his abilities weren't enough to keep Boston in the league last season.

Other than Clarke, they've picked up a reserve keeper from Rotherham and a midfielder who was on loan with them last season.

They've sniffed around trying to bring a striker in, even making a move for Hull's Michael Bridges at one point, but that reeked of a Chester style publicity stunt and they'll go into the 2007-8 season without a new striker - this being an area they suffered from last season.

A similar goal drought could see them plummeting towards the bottom again.

Okay, okay. We hold our hands up. Believe it or not, that isn't Grimsby's Danny North in the picture above, but given we haven't got one in our photo archives, we thought that was the closest thing we could come up with.

Anyway, North is a young striker who has come through the ranks at Grimsby and started to make quite an impact at the back end of the 2006-7 season.

He finished the season with six goals from twelve starts for the Mariners, and having had his squad number changed from 22 to 9, it would appear that Alan Buckley has plenty of faith in the Grimsby born striker.

He's already hit a hat trick for the first team, when he hit three against Barnet last season.

It's difficult quite what to expect from Grimsby this next season. Are we going to see the Grimsby who did their best to get relegated, or was their form in February and March more likely what we are to expect from them this time round?

We reckon we'll probably see a bit of both this next season. There's not been a lot of changes to the squad, so it's pretty much as you were for them. With that in mind, we can see a very similar finish to what they had last year, but we wouldn't be at all surprised if they finished massively above or below where we have them down for.

There's quite a lot of pressure on the shoulders of the aforementioned Danny North. Grimsby's biggest problem last season was scoring goals, and when your top scorer only picks up eight goals for the season, then it's clearly a key area needing sorting. As it is, they have drafted in no extra strikers.