All change at Crewe

It would be nice to say it has been a long hot summer! Long but very wet. A summer of change has happened in South Cheshire. This summer has seen Steve Holland take the step up to first team coach and Dario moves up to Technical Director.

The first summer signing was Colin "Junior" Daniel who was signed days after the season finale at Nottingham Forest. Crewe moved quickly to secure the Eastwood Town star amid interest from a host of other clubs.

The move for Daniel was followed by the signing of Billy Jones (mark 2) days after his club Exeter missed out on promotion to the Football League and former Bradford midfielder Steve Schumacher elected to move to South Cheshire after his contract expired with the Yorkshire club.

A busy week was concluded with the announcement that Eugen Bopp would also join pending a successful medical on return to pre-season training. The former Rotherham and Forest player breezed through his medical upon return to Reaseheath for Pre-season.

The defence has been considerable rebuffed ahead of the new campaign, after a year at Tranmere - Chris McCready has returned to his spiritual home whilst we also completed the signing of Danny O`Donnell from Liverpool who was of course on loan with us last season.

As ever, a number of trialists came and went, former Sheffield and Coventry Star Patrick Suffo didn`t do enough to warrant a deal but the club did agree 1 year deals for defenders George Abbey and Ryan Lynch.

The big summer sale was Luke Varney (pictured), he agreed a 2.5m deal with Championship club Charlton Athletic, he followed Billy Jones (mark 1) and Jon Otsemobor through the exit door.

Since that fateful day we have been searching for a striker to replace the hitman but with two days to go we are no nearer to signing that elusive centre forward that we need badly.

We have been linked with names galore; premiership youngsters Lee Barnard, Craig Lindfield, Frazier Campbell have all been linked with loan moves whilst the names of John Hartson and Nick Chadwick have been mentioned as potential purchases.

Pre-season has come and gone, following the razzmatazz of Liverpool coming to town we won 2-1 at Alsager and 5-0 at Quorn in a double header. We then got our paddle boat out as we braved the floods with a trip to Forest Green where we won by 1 goal courtesy of Steve Schumacher`s first half strike.

Back to back home games against Derby (2-0) and Stockport (3-1) finished the first team preparations for the new season. The friendly action finished when Crewe XI beat Newcastle Town 1-0 in soggy conditions.

So all in all, a busy summer. If we could add a striker to the ranks today or tomorrow I think the majority of Crewe fans would look back on the summer of 2007 as a good one and most will be looking forward to a new season which starts on Saturday against Brighton.

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