A Review By John Taylor 

With the season beginning in earnest rather early, especially after such a short break with the World Cup, the trip to Bournemouth seemed only a few days after we broke up last season with the Swansea debacle. New signing Paul Shaw was in the team for the meeting with the Cherries along with one of our other 2 acquisitions, Phil Picken, now on our books after the successful loan last term. The other newcomer, Michael Jordan was on the bench. On an unusually dull day for the start of the season, Town began well and got better as the game progressed, whilst we restricted the home side to speculative long-range efforts at best. We defended well up the park and left Barry Roche a virtual spectator in what proved to be a convincing 3-0 win, our best ever at Dean Court. All the goals came after the break and came from Derek Niven, Colin Larkin and Paul Shaw to send us back to Derbyshire with a huge smile.

Deadly Derek Niven opened the Spireites goal tally

The following midweek was more of a challenge with promoted Carlisle working very hard to keep us out and to gain a rare draw at our place. We did a lot of good work but failed to find the killer ball, whilst Barry Roche made his first telling contribution with an excellent save from Murphy's free kick. It was a game where we had more positives than negatives, but the continued failure to win a home game was very frustrating. Paul Shaw's injury didn't help matters either.

Goals galore against Millwall

We soon put that right, however, when Millwall came to town under the management of Nigel Spackman. We really clicked on the day to leave the Londoners a well-beaten outfit and one who looked like they didn't know each other, which is probably not far from the truth, given all their changes in personnel over the summer. Goals from Hall (2), Allison (2) & Folan, with a solitary well taken reply from Braniff gave us a resounding win to end the worst winless run at home in the club's history.

Thats 5 five

This set up an interesting game at Vale, only weeks since we'd previously been there, for the final away game of last season. Again, we ended up with nothing, though this time, we deserved all three points given our superiority. We murdered them first half and went ahead with a headed goal from Aaron Downes from Kevan Hurst's corner. Vale pegged us back on the stroke of half time with their first meaningful effort. Hazell made an unusual error in defending a long ball and headed it straight upwards to Sodje who sliced his shot woefully, but it fell kindly for Constantine, who couldn't miss from 6 yards with an open goal.

We all thought Caleb had snatched a point with his second goal in two starts

Vale were a little better after the break and were fortunate to go ahead on 73 minutes when they won a free kick on the edge of the box by cleverly working an obstruction against the unlucky O'Hare. We failed to challenge twice for headers in the box and skipper Pilkington headed his 3^rd goal against us in 2 games out of a career total of 5. We equalised with 6 minutes to go with Folan heading in Picken's right wing cross to appear to win us a point. Vale, however, kept up their 100% start with a peach of a finish by Constantine after Larkin's sloppy pass in midfield opened us up. It was a sickening blow after we had done so much, but it seems that the lessons of last season have still not been learned and we continue to concede daft goals by switching off too easily.

A damp Carling Cup night

Cup action was next on the agenda as Wolves came to Town for round 1 of the Carling Cup on a soggy night that left the travelling faithful on the Cross Street end well and truly soaked and downcast. Whilst the Wolves side saw 6 changes from their weekend league game, it was still a strong outfit and a tough test for Town and we battled well throughout. The full 90 minutes and extra time failed to see a goal registered and it came down to the dreaded penalty shootout to settle the game. Bailey missed our third as the excellent Ikeme made a good save and at 4-4 with 1 Wolves kick to go it looked as though we'd blown it again. Big Baz had other ideas, though and made a fine stop from Karl Henry. So, in sudden death, Folan, Clarke and Allott all scored, but Craddock smashed his effort over the bar to give us our first penalty shootout win since Middlesbrough in 1983. The subsequent Saturday draw gave us the enticing prospect of Stuart Pearce's Manchester City at Saltergate in round 2.

Roche saved to keep us in it

The Tranmere game following that draw was always going to be difficult and with both the crowd and the team flat, it was no surprise that we were absolutely abysmal and lost 2-0 to an ordinary-looking Rovers team. Like the week before, we conceded right on the break, this time to another ridiculous goal. Roche made a good save but the ball fell to Mullin whose shot was half saved but looped up off the big keeper. O'Hare and Downes chased back to clear but put each other off and the Aussie merely helped the ball into the net. The second half was even more lacklustre and Taylor's well-taken goal on 68 minutes finished the game as a contest. The substitutions did little to pep things up and the defeat looked like another game from last season's catalogue of poor performances. The only good thing in the game from our perspective was that just before the second, O'Hare wasn't sent off. He dumped Tranmere wide man Shuker onto the running track with a badly mistimed challenge. Many opponents these days would have writhed in mock agony to secure the red card, but Shuker got straight up and O'Hare's punishment was just a yellow.

This left the month from a playing front on a downbeat note, but we had some good news off the field with the signing of former Spireite favourite Alan Stevenson as Head of Marketing and to spearhead the transition from Saltergate to the proposed new stadium at the old Dema site. This is a fantastic piece of news as Stevo is an old hand at this sort of role, probably uniquely so. It is a marvellous coup for the club. We even saw significant movement to the actual sir in August with the demolition of the twin chimneys to leave the location ready for the decontamination work. We should have signed another Hungarian in the month in Gyorgy Kiss, but international clearance issues appear to have got in the way.

So, again a mixed month, with a much needed home win and a cup success on the one hand but some of last season's bad habits creeping back on the other. Player-wise, it's been mixed and the swapping of strikers in the pairing of Shaw and Larkin or Allison and Folan is certainly a little bewildering to the average fan. September should reveal a little more and we can only hope it's more of the Millwall form and less of the Tranmere. Man-of-the-month for August is easy this time: Caleb Folan, whose starting to look something like the player that the manager described ages ago, but which we were beginning to doubt existed. Derek Niven's consistent energy and performance is also worthy of mention. If Caleb keeps going like against Millwall and Vale, the season could be pretty exciting and unpredictable.