The Football League season begins

Cambridge United boss Mark Bonner says that the club has "aspirations bigger than our spend" ahead of the first game of the new League One season.

The U's first game is home against Oxford United this weekend.

Cambridge avoided relegation by the narrowest of margins on the final day of the last season - firstly by beating Forest Green Rovers and then with two other results going their way.

Talking ahead of the season opener, Mark said:

"We're having a right go to punch above our weight this season," he said.

"We feel this could be an open league that we really want to attack and finish as high up as we can.

"But there should be a real understanding that we're still striving to develop and improve, and the club and the owners are making unbelievable progress to keep doing that.

Remarkably, Mark Bonner is now League One's longest reigning manager with a tenure of 3 years and 185 days by the time the first match of the season is played.  The board continue to back him despite a difficult 2022/3 campaign, and Bonner believes that stability is the key to future success.

"We think it's a bit of a strength of ours and something we want to play on and build on.

"We know what we're building, we're not where we want to be but we're making really good progress That progress is quite quick.

"There's probably a limit to where we can get naturally with the resources we've got but there's certainly not a lack of ambition or mentality to do that."