Plaudits but not enough points - the story so far for Chesterfield
Good teams after ten games have more than 15 points.
Not my words, but Paul Cook’s after charitable Chesterfield gifted two of them on a plate for the opposition down at Crawley on Saturday.
It was sloppy and careless, the act of a team for whom it all got all too easy after going 2-0 up.
Ten games into this most open of League Two seasons there are still good vibes about the 2026/27 version of Chesterfield even it does sometimes leave doubts.
The opening month was uncomfortable.
Two blanks against Fleetwood, the promise of something better at Salford and then a ropy, disjointed showing at Rotherham when some early impatience from supporters caused Cook to snap back.
"I just don’t know where a lot of our supporters’ bad energy is coming from. Let’s have a little bit of reality check about where we are,” he said.
The “reality” was that the squad jigsaw wasn’t complete. Partnerships, understandings, patterns of play and the mechanics of the manager’s passing game all needed more work.
Within a week Louie Marsh and Joel Randall were through the door on loan deals and since then things have started click.
After the sometimes pedestrian play in the opening matches, a corner has certainly been turned since Randall popped to nab a point in the goals feast against Barnet early in September.
That draw closed the book on the first five games.
The five since have brought a good afternoon at Oldham and two sparkling home shows against York and Tranmere.
They’ve also brought a still unfathomable defeat at Cheltenham and Saturday’s give-away in West Sussex that somehow ending up feeling like a defeat.
“Typical Town. Something of a Chesterfield reality,” groaned one fan on social media.
Rightly or wrongly there is sometimes a feeling of history repeating itself among the more sceptical supporters and looking at the stats they might have an argument.
The current tally of 15 points is one more than at the same stage in 24/25 and three less than last season, both of which of course ended in the play-offs.
The Spireites are seventh, once more in the slipstream of League Two’s top three rather than in and amongst them.
This season at least seven get-able points have escaped that would have been comfortably good enough for top spot above Salford.
There hasn’t been enough clean sheets – just two in the opening ten. The opposition’s goals to chances ratio has been better than Chesterfield’s at the other end.
Can this season be different? Can they go all the way and avoid the lottery of the play-offs?
The injection of quality from Randall and Marsh (seven goals and counting) has to give cause for optimism. So too does the work of the two defence-splitters Dilan Markanday and Remeao Hutton down the right-hand side. The teams can almost look lop-sided in attack at times, in a good way.
There’s legs in the side (McEachran, Stirk), the continual goals threat of Lee Bonis and no lack of good back-ups on the bench should injuries, drops in form or results dictate.
No wonder Cook says he has a better feeling about this group than the one he had last season.
That didn’t stop him having that pop at them on Saturday. Teams with a soft underbelly don’t win promotions.
If points were handed out for style then Chesterfield and the way they move the ball and craft opportunities would be nearer the top of the pile.
It's that little bit of substance that’s missing.
Get more of a balance between the two and they’re really in business.