THERE’S always a feeling of excitement around football clubs when it comes to pre-season, despite it seeming like last season has only just finished.

THERE’S always a feeling of excitement around football clubs when it comes to pre-season, despite it seeming like last season has only just finished.

The lads came back on Saturday for training, which is being led by Dennis Greene, and they seemed to be in great spirits.

I expect that the three new players we have unveiled – Will, Junior and Lee – will make an impression, and I know they will add some more quality to the squad. That’s what we are looking at throughout the squad – where we can add quality, we will.

We’re still looking at a couple of players, and we’ve got some irons in the fire, but we’re keeping our eyes open – there’s still time for a good player or two to creep out of the woodwork and get our attention, so long as they will improve our team and our squad.

I feel we already have a strong group of players together, and we ended last season in such good form, that I want to make sure that we hit the ground running come the start of the new campaign.

One of our main focuses for this pre-season is improving the conditioning and fitness of the group. I want to make sure that we start next season fitter than we have ever been before, though the hard miles in training are not always popular with the players!

I’m lucky that I’ve got a good assistant in Dennis, who is able to deputise for me if I’m not able to make it to every session.

Getting a good pre-season under our belts is going to be crucial if we want to make the flying start to the season that we’re hoping for – we went 28 unbeaten at the end of last year, and we aim to pick up where we left off. Being sharp and up for the challenge is key, and we’ll be working hard to make sure we are ready.