It's been a frustrating time for me not to have been involved in the pre season but I'm making steady progress and have been training this week and hope to be back in the next two to three weeks playing my football. It's a steady regime of running, training, swimming and weights sessions all under the watchful eye of our new Physio Simon Farnworth a real professional with 11 years experience working with Liverpool's academy.
He has worked with the likes of Steven Gerrard and Stephen Wright so he has a lot of experience and shows a real professional approach to his work. I must thank Dave Edge for all his hard work at the club and someone who I had a lot of time and respect for but like all things in football we move on and wish him well. I must thank our sports scientist Danny Birdsall who has worked with me in my rehab. Danny works wonders for all the lads who pick up injuries with a seven day rehab regime and a well respected part of our team. One lad who is also still on the mend is Garry Hunter who's had a tough time with an op in the summer and a recurring groin problem that hopefully will get sorted and lets hope we can see a return for Garry back to playing.
With a new season we see players joining us and leaving. We wish Blinks Yatesy and my good mate Michael Howard the very best of luck with their new clubs. It was good to see Mickey back playing against Motherwell in the European qualifiers and hope he has a good season.With that I must welcome on board the new lads, Ian Craney, Darren Moss, Laurence Wilson and Phil Jevons all players with pedigree and bags of experience.They've all settled in really well so much so that I've already taken money off Craney and Mossy after Glorious Goodwood although Mr Moss did get a 9/1 winning tip that he didn't share with his good mates and recovered some of his losses but myself and Mr Wilson were not best pleased!!!
This is our third season in the League and whilst we have not got past that second season syndrome we have targets ahead of us and I know that whilst there will be plenty of off field activities to celebrate the last season here we have to be professional about our business and try and win football matches. We always look to try and get to that 50 point target as soon as we can by conceding as few goals we can and scoring a few more goals in the process.
The league is shaping up with Notts County high spenders with Middle Eastern backers and now Sven in charge there well set to take the league.What about the rest of us? Well I do think Bury and Rotherham have a good chance of promotion with strong squads but if you look at the rest there's around 10 teams all capable of getting into those play off spots.
I do think that we can push for a place when all eyes will be on the big boys to do well and satisfy the high expectations their fans will have. What we need to do is go about our business getting those points winning matches and see where that takes us. It would be great in this last season to see more people come down here and get involved in the historic season and bring friends to boost attendances and that will help us all on match days.We know its going to be a tough league make no mistake but I do think it will be an open one with everybody capable of beating any team we know that the bigger teams will be under more pressure to perform.
As I said earlier it has been frustrating having to sit out preseason but I have been to every game to support the lads including Kendal, Southport and Lancaster and we have given every one a game and tried lots of ideas on the park and I think now we are well prepared to go into this very tough opening game against a relegated Hereford side who will have made many changes and will be looking to bounce back up again I'm sure.
We have played some decent teams in the preseason in Huddersfield who were very impressive and two strong sides in Plymouth and Burnley. Every game we are learning no matter who the opposition are and is good preparation for a long season ahead.
On to today's opponents and Hereford United a club I almost signed for when I was at Manchester City before I went to Telford United and I have the utmost respect for Graham Turner who has now moved to the Director of Football role. Hereford are always difficult opposition to play against and they will come to attack as they always do playing 4 4 2 so we will have to be at our best again and be disciplined throughout the game. I'll be gutted to miss Deepdale on Tuesday night and again we will be underdogs but you never know what may happen there and I'm sure many of you will make the trip to cheer us on. For now though it's all about the noise levels and getting behind the team. I'll be shouting every pass and feeling every tackle as I'm sure you will too and let's hope we can the first 3 points of the season.
