Football Season Review

Preston have secured a return to the Championship after four years in League One, and have achieved their promotion via the play-offs in some style, as they beat Chesterfield with a 4:0 aggregate score in the semi-final before going on to crush Swindon with the same scoreline at Wembley. The promotion comes as a reward for two and a half years of constant improvement that the Lillywhites have shown under Simon Grayson, and the experienced boss will be delighted to end their play-off hoodoo, as they had been unsuccessful in their previous nine attempts to win promotion via the play-offs. However, Preston had their fair share of bumps along the road before finally clinching their ticket back to the Championship - they looked set to win promotion going into the final few weeks of the season, but a poor run of form which culminated in a final day defeat at Colchester allowed MK Dons to leapfrog them and finish second. Grayson's men deserve a lot of praise for the manner in which they did not allow their final day heartbreak to affect them in the play-offs, and few will argue with the perception that they deserved their promotion after they beat both of their play-off rivals so convincingly. They have performed as a real unit throughout the season, but some players should definitely be singled out for special praise. These players include Paul Huntington, who managed to resurrect his career after struggling to make the squad in the second half of the previous season, Paul Gallagher and Joe Garner, who were their most consistent attacking weapons throughout the season, and Jermaine Beckford, who started his life at Preston slowly but got better as time elapsed and went on to score six play-off goals to play a key role in the Lillywhites' play-off victory.

Player of the Season: Paul Gallagher