Cook has the right recipee to lift club
THEY’VE had six years in the wilderness, but Chesterfield are now eagerly awaiting their Football League return – and the Spireites want to keep on climbing.
Paul Cook’s men wrapped up the National League title with a 3-0 home win against Boreham Wood last weekend. It took them to 95 points, beyond the reach of a chasing pack who were never much more than a speck in the rearview mirror.
The Spireites have scored the most goals, earned the highest number of victories and have the best goal difference in the division.
“People will look at the win over Boreham Wood and say ‘That was the moment,” said assistant manager Danny Webb, who won promotion to the EFL as a coach under the late Justin Edinburgh at Leyton Orient in 2019.
Excellent
“But the season isn’t about what you do at the end. It’s about what you do from the very first kick, and we’ve been excellent since our first game against Dorking.
“You look at a team like Wrexham, they were in it for 15 years. I was lucky enough to go up in the second year at Orient but there are plenty of big teams who’ve been stuck here for six or seven years. It’s so tough when only one goes up (automatically).
“When Wrexham (champions) and Notts County (playoffs) went up last season, I think a lot of people said ‘Well, Chesterfield will just go and walk it now’.
“That’s huge pressure in itself, but the players have dealt incredibly well with the expectation and they’ve responded to the few setbacks we’ve had. I’m very, very proud of these boys.”
And they won’t be returning just to make up the numbers, according to Webb.
“We want to keep winning,” he said. “As a promoted club, you want to take that momentum and that winning mentality into next season. You don’t want it to flatten out and have to get everyone going again.
Bounce
“You want to bounce into next season and you just need to look at Wrexham, Stockport and Barrow. They’re all up there now because they’ve built on that momentum.”
Chesterfield’s relegation in 2018 was wholly unexpected, coming just three years after they’d contested a League One play-off semi-final against Preston.
Budget overruns on the Proact stadium, a boardroom walkout, misjudged recruitment and several unsuccessful managerial appointments swift
