Yeovil Town will be embarking on their first campaign as a non-league club since the 2002-03 season and they are sure to find the National League a very different proposition to the Nationwide Conference that Gary Johnson guided them out of.
For starters, most of the teams in the current National League are full-time whereas the Conference division of 2002-03 was largely part-time, and it is against this backdrop that new manager Darren Sarll is looking to lead the Glovers back into the Football League.
Sarll, who has experience of managing at League Two level with Stevenage, is taking over a club who haven't finished in the top half of any division that they have played in since they won promotion to the Championship in the 2012-13 campaign.
Since then three relegations in six years have followed in a decline that Gary Johnson, Terry Skiverton, Paul Sturrock, Darren Way and Neale Marmon have all been unable to arrest.
As well as Sarll's appointment this summer, there were also changes at boardroom level with Chairman John Fry and director Norman Hayward agreeing a deal with a new consortium headed by Scott Priestall and Erroll Pope, which is still to be completed.
Overall the Glovers seem to be in better shape than Notts County, who came down with them from League Two and spent most of the close season battling a winding up order over an unpaid tax bill. With a central defensive partnership of Luke Wilkinson and Lee Collins conceding too many goals may not be too much of a problem for Yeovil.
Up front, Rhys Murphy, formerly of Arsenal, Telstar, Dagenham and Redbridge and Forest Green Rovers, has the potential to continue the form he showed for Chelmsford City in the National League South last season. Murphy found the back of the net 28 times in all competitions for the Clarets, and if he can score 20 or more for the Glovers he will become the first player to do so since Paddy Madden in the 2012-13 campaign.
All in all, if Yeovil are able to make an immediate return to the Football League it will be most likely be via the play-offs, which will see six clubs scrambling for a place in League Two to secure promotion alongside the champions of the division.
