Claridge is a pundit for The Football League Show and Football Focus

Former Crystal Palace and Reading boss Steve Coppell is set to return to football as the next manager of Bristol City.

I look at the chances of Coppell taking City into the Premier League by winning promotion to the top flight for the third time as a boss and also examine the prospects of Paul Mariner as Plymouth manager following Argyle's relegation into League One.

I also consider the direction MK Dons and Tranmere should take over their next manager in the summer, plus give my thoughts on Notts County's promotion from League Two and Stevenage Borough going up into the Football League.

If you have a question for me, you can submit it through Twitter at http://twitter.com/AskClaridge or use the form on the top right of the page.

Hi Steve, I'm a Bristol City fan and it seems likely that Steve Coppell is taking over as our new manager. How highly do you rate him and do you think he can do a good job for us next season?
Tim Petteford, UK

Coppell will do a great job. You take a look at his record and wherever he has been; Brentford, Brighton, Crystal Palace or Reading, he has been fantastic - he enjoys the type of challenge he will get with Bristol City.

But it's not a formality that he is going to take City up, and certainly not next season. They are a club that should be competitive in the Championship but they are not going to just march into the top flight now he is there.

Coppell stepped down as Reading boss at the end of the 2008/09 season

Expectations will be very high among the fans at Ashton Gate - Gary Johnson got them to a Championship play-off final a couple of years ago and suddenly anything less wasn't good enough.

There is no guarantee it is going to work out in terms of promotion but if you're a City fan you've got to be happy with Coppell's appointment. The club has given itself the best opportunity of going up.

With Plymouth now knowing they will be in League One next season, should they stick with Paul Mariner? There's some good teams in League One and it's a tough division to get out of.
Andrew Chapman, Argyle fan in Leeds

It's very difficult to say whether Mariner should still be there next year because I haven't seen them enough. He hasn't pulled up any trees but he hasn't been an unmitigated disaster either. They have done better than they did under previous boss Paul Sturrock, who I don't think left Mariner with an awful lot to work with.

He inherited somebody else's players and that somebody else, with all due respect, wasn't doing particularly well.

So it's down to the Plymouth board to decide on Mariner's performance. They might think he is getting the best out of the team despite failing to keep them up and, if that is the case, then he must stay.

But when he replaced Sturrock at the end of 2009 I thought it was a strange appointment because of his background in Major League Soccer in the US.

I've got a friend and ex-Leicester team-mate Steve Guppy who is over there coaching at the moment with Colorado Rapids and, from what he says, life is very different indeed to working in English football.

If he does keep the job, Mariner is going to have to cover some miles to find some players to get them out of that division.

They lost a lot of money last year and are probably going to do the same this year so they are not going to be able to splash the cash like Southampton, for example, in an effort to go back up.

So they need somebody who knows the lower divisions - what you're going to get from certain players and what you are going to need to get out of them to get up - and you wouldn't think because of his background that Mariner would know that.

MK Dons seem to be going backwards - I think we may be fighting relegation in League One next season. Who is the ideal candidate to be Paul Ince's successor?
Carl, Ireland

At the time, I didn't think it was the right decision for Ince to go back there when he did last year - and I definitely don't now. It hasn't worked out.

He set the bar quite high in his first spell. If you have done quite well at a place and you go back there then you have certainly got to have at least the same ammunition you had before to have the same success.

Anything other than reaching the play-offs was going to be seen as a failure this season. But if - as we have been continually told - the club is slashing its budget, then he never had a chance of doing that.

I don't know where MK Dons are heading next. I don't think we will see another big name like Ince or Roberto Di Matteo as their next manager - it is more likely to be a lower-league manager, who is young and hungry like those two but also knows the lower divisions and will be capable of finding a bargain or two because that is what they will need.

It will also be interesting to see where Paul Ince goes next too. We know he can manage, but now he needs to choose the right club. It's amazing how quickly your stock can rise so quickly and then fall straight away and he has found that out the hard way.

Hi Steve, I know that Wycombe was one of the clubs you played for towards the end of your career. With them picking up nine out of nine points from their last three games, what do you think of their chances of staying up in League One?
Mike Williams, England

MK Dons 2-3 Wycombe

What are their chances of staying up? Still not very good I'm afraid!

Even if they do survive, I just think the club's board have got to decide whether, long-term, they want to try to stay in that division or not.

They need to give whoever their manager is the budget to give themselves a chance of staying in that division, otherwise they are going to keep going up and down.

Hi Steve, I asked you in October when Les Parry first took over from John Barnes as Tranmere boss whether he was the right man for the job. We've been picking up points step by step and we find ourselves 21st in League One and two points adrift of safety. Whether we stay up or not, at the end of the season should chairman Peter Johnson hand Les the manager's job on a full-time basis?
Jamie, Merseyside

I'm a bit of a sceptic about a physio getting a manager's job and, personally, I would get a new manager in come what may. But you have to be fair to Les, who has steadied the ship and kept Tranmere's survival hopes alive after the team had made a dreadful start to the season.

He deserves a pat on the back for that and, if he keeps them up, then there is no reason why he shouldn't keep the job. But if he takes them down then there has got to be a change.

Notts County have achieved promotion from League Two, after a quite staggering outlay which was impossible for other clubs in that division to match. Do you think they are cheats and, if so, what - if any - action should be taken against them?
englandbill40, UK

It's been a strange old season for Notts County - going from the sublime to the ridiculous at times. It was a farcical situation under the old regime and what we saw was typical of when people come into clubs who know nothing about football and throw buckets of money around.

The circumstances they find themselves in depended on the people who were running the club having the capacity to go substantially in debt. It's unfair but they have a new chairman now in Ray Trew and they are not cheats in the sense they are paying people what they owe and they have not gone into administration.

Trew says he is not going to take the easy option and they will deal with those debts. I like him, and what he has said - he seems sincere and a solid businessman.

I don't think he is trying to make excuses either. He knows what has happened before he arrived is wrong, he is trying to make the best of the situation.

So, if clubs going heavily into debt is a form of cheating then, yes, they have cheated but, if you take into account the work they are doing to bring those debts down, then no they have not.

I am a Burton Albion supporter but was pleased to see Stevenage get promoted from the Blue Square Premier. How do you think Boro will cope in the Football League? After all, who would have predicted that the Brewers would do as well as we have done?
Ed Thomas, UK

I think everybody was pleased to see Stevenage go up after what happened 14 years ago when they were denied promotion to the Football League because their ground was not up to scratch.

It will be interesting to see their boss Graham Westley as a Football League manager because up until now he has always worked in non league.

He has built some decent sides at Stevenage, Farnborough and Rushden. He has seen enough decent players leave to make the step up down the years, without getting the chance himself, so he certainly deserves a big thumbs up for achieving that now.

Westley has built a team that have been ultra-solid all season. Man-for-man they might not be as good a side as Luton or Oxford but they are big and strong and have been the most consistent side in the Blue Square Premier. You cannot argue that they don't deserve to go up and they are well equipped for life in League Two.

If he keeps the majority of his side together and they keep doing what they have been then they will be good enough to finish comfortably in mid-table next term.

Steve Claridge is a BBC Football League pundit who played more than 800 matches for 15 clubs over the course of a 24-year playing career. He was talking to Chris Bevan.

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