By Nathan Jackson
July 24 2010

Bury were one of those sides where I can safely say the facts speak for themselves. Bury only won two of their last seventeen games last season and say they would have done better had Andy Bishop been in the side all season, but the results show that Bishop's absense was the only time during the season where their results were consistently good.  

Bury are one of the sides who seem to have forgotten that pre-season results realistically mean nothing. Earlier this week they beat a strong Leeds side 4-0 and Bury message boards were awash with fans now expecting promotion, it's just a pity that looking at it realistically, pre-season results often have little influence on how seasons pan out. For example, in recent years City beat a full strength Villa side 3-1, only to then finish midtable, but the finest example I can think of that pre-season results mean nothing comes from last summer when Leyton Orient beat Newcastle 6-1, Newcastle went on to win the Championship and Orient only avoided relegation to League Two in the final few weeks of the season.

The Shakers are one of those many sides who had years of barely avoiding relegation, only to then almost gain promotion from their first decent season in a long time, but they were defeated on penalties by Shrewsbury. Hopes were high for last season and for a while it did look like they would have another season in the Playoffs (at minimum). A 2-1 win over Shrewsbury on February 19^th left the Shakers just two points between their table topping rivals Rochdale.

It was all looking good for Bury, whom are now the third longest serving club in this division having joined in 2002, third only to Lincoln and Macclesfield, both of whom came into the division in 1999. That win over Shrewsbury have made it 8 wins from 10 games, but they wouldn't win any of their next nine games and by the time their next win came around, they were outside of the Playoffs. They did briefly return to a Playoff place but failed to win any of their last four games, eventually finishing 9^th.

They also started conceding a lot of goals towards the end of the season, conceding five goals twice in the space of a week and a 3-0 defeat at Torquay. This probably wasn't helped by their inability to score from open play towards the end of the season. Between February 9^th and April 5^th, they only scored three times and they were all from the penalty spot. Infact, other than Barnet, no team ended the season as badly as Bury did and only two wins in their final seventeen games tells it's own story.

Most worryingly for Bury is that despite not scoring many goals towards the end of the season, Alan Knill hasn't really addressed the problem during the pre-season. He's lost Andy Morrell to Wrexham, whereas Lowe, Carlton and Bishop all remain at the club, although the latter was injured for part of last season.

One of his potential solutions seems to be former Imp Lenell John-Lewis. John-Lewis came through the youth ranks at Sincil Bank and somehow managed to get over 70 appearances for the Imps. No-one is quite sure how he managed that as in a five year spell where over 15 players came out of the youth system, he was arguably the worst. His first touch is awful and the fact he only scored one goal in his final year and a half at the club (and yes, he is a striker) says it all. He was given a trial by Alan Knill in the summer and many sources say that he has done enough to secure himself a permanent deal.

Bury are one of the teams in the division that have seemingly got worse with their ins and outs during the close season. Ryan Cresswell, Tom Newey, Richard Baker, Stephen Dawson, Brian Barry-Murphy, Paul Scott and Andy Morrell have all left the club, whereas they've brought in Andy Haworth, Steven Schumacher and Joe Skarz.

Bury might be playing a dangerous game if they are expecting the return of Bishop to be the sudden return of goals. Bishop played in 25 games for Bury last season and only scored three goals, two of which made absolutely no difference to the result. Bury's good spell during last season came after Bishop got injured, and ended just after he came back into the side. In the 25 games he played for Bury last season, they won just eight of those. Don't get me wrong, he's not a bad player, but he is definitely not the saviour he used to be.

Bury's only seemingly source for regular goals will be Ryan Lowe (left). Lowe still managed to play 44 games in all competitions last season......not bad for someone who was apparently injured for a "considerable time". In those 44 games he scored 18 goals, a very respectable figure and those goals won Bury a whopping 19 points, one of the highest amount for any striker in the division.

Overall, I think Knill has a lot of work to do if Bury are going to be anything more than midtable this season. The facts speak for themselves, 2 wins in their last 17 League games last season, only one striker remaining at the club who scored a decent amount of goals last year and no-one signed yet to replace Morrell. Knill does appear to be keen on replacing Morrell with John-Lewis, but that would be the equivalent of taking Wembley as the national stadium and replacing it with Accrington's Fraser Eagle Stadium, and given that Morrell was only your average League Two striker, that says a lot about John-Lewis' ability.

The one thing that they do have going for them is that they have a considerably better squad that a few other teams, which will be enough to see them finishing in midtable, where they have spent most of their life in League Two.

Bury back to their natural midtable position?

Discussion started by theimps.ka (IP Logged), 24/07/2010 02:04

theimps.ka
24/07/2010 02:04

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