RYAN Lowe believes his Bury side could have kicked on and pushed for promotion to the Championship.

The Shakers great guided the club to second spot in League Two last season despite mounting financial problems off the field.

Those issues would eventually lead to Lowe, now waiting on news of a possible promotion with new club Plymouth, and his squad heading for pastures new.

Those involved in finishing as runners-up then watched on in horror from afar as Steve Dale’s battle with the EFL ultimately ended with the Shakers being expelled from the Football League.

Lowe believes had things been different, a League One promotion push could have been on the cards.

“Last year was heart-breaking,” he told the I Had Trials Once podcast.

“Look at the lads we had in the dressing room, your (Nicky) Adams, your (Nicky) Maynards, that’s to name just a few.

“We had a good group of lads and to see that group just dissolve and go, and everyone move away was heart-breaking.

“My little girl’s obsessed with Bury, that was her favourite time, and she was at that age where she knew everything and she said to me the other day: ‘Hey dad, you know now if you were third in League One that means you might be in the Championship next season with Bury if you’d all stayed together’.

“We knew that if we kept the majority of that team together and added one or two additions we could have done something.

“I look at Coventry and Rotherham now, they’ve got some good players and they play some good football and Oxford and Wycombe and so on, but last season we were unstoppable at times. I think we definitely would have been in the top half of League One pushing for promotion to the Championship, little old Bury trying to get promoted to the Championship.”