"Okay so where do I start on my usual annual contribution? I suppose I could harp on about winning the league, getting into Europe by winning the FA Cup and having one of our strikers score 50 goals - the sort of things which are usually on my list of targets that I want the club to achieve. Or I can talk about other things which long-term mean more to the fabric of our football club and its future. First and foremost, I want a freshness to everything next season. A freshness to our squad, a freshness to our coaching staff, a freshness to our approach to how we play come kick off and a fresh attitude from both our players and also myself and the fans. No football club has a divine right to win leagues or promotions regardless of the money they spend or the players they buy or the history or size of the club. After our success in the Championship, where we have plied our trade for three of the last five seasons, our club, its players, staff and even our fans played and supported last season with a bit of a chip on our shoulders. It was a chip that transformed into a giant boulder which ended up weighing us all down with instant demands and expectations of returning to the Championship, which in turn led to serious dissatisfaction in the way we played our football and in us finishing sixth in League One. Finishing one game short of a League One play-off final at Wembley, winning the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy at Wembley and scoring 100 goals wasn’t deemed a success by anybody associated with Peterborough United due to this large chip on our shoulders, yet statistically the season was probably in the top two seasons of all time in Posh’s history. So where does the owner one go from the above? Well the first thing is to take a break, find some perspective, analyse the campaign you deemed a failure, look for the positives, learn from the mistakes, take recent historical success into account and bounce back with a game-plan that’s not all about winning the next game, but ensuring your club wins on and off the pitch for the next few years. So here are a few things I listed that needed fixing: - Be open and honest with your manager about changes you feel need to take place, then secure his immediate future so you can get building again – CHECK - Have a little bit of a shake-up internally on the coaching side of things and the sports science approach within the club – CHECK - Ensure that you only have current players, and bring in future players, who want to be at the club, and for the right reasons – CHECK - Reduce the size of the playing squad to a good manageable number in order to maximise the daily coaching required and to full effect – CHECK/IN PROGRESS - Ensure the youth players at our club who are ready to contribute to a full campaign are not held back by players who may not have long-term futures at the club – CHECK - Introduce a youthful exuberance into our squad that will help bring a fun factor back to the club and help create an incredible team spirit environment – CHECK (The starting XI will most likely have an average age of 22. Against Luton eight starters were under the age of 22) - Invest hundreds of thousands of pounds on the training facility so that all players and staff will be based there full-time as opposed to previous seasons – CHECK - Pick a younger captain who will lead the team with pride, from the front and who can relate to the many youngsters at our club, but one with a mature attitude – CHECK - Get our summer recruitment spot on and in the right areas that the squad needs improvement – CHECK - Make sure our pre-season camp is one where team unity is at an all-time high and everybody is singing the same tune with the same expectations for the season ahead – CHECK - Assign every member of staff and playing staff individual and team targets for the season ahead - CHECK The bottom line is that everyone associated with Peterborough United wants promotion, wants to be a Championship football club again, but no-one here feels they have that divine right to it or that they need to just turn up and put in a 6/10 performance to achieve it. No-one here is looking for a move to another football club outside of the listed players and everyone here wants to go out, play with a high tempo, play fluid exciting, attacking football with a smile on their faces and ensure our product is one our fans will enjoy, embrace and keep coming back for. Every one of us at the club wants the same thing, but also has the patience to allow our young squad to go out and achieve our goals long-term. I’m not going to lie to our fans, there could be times where they won’t always like some results, there will be moaning for sure as is the case with every football club, but I ask for the patience to allow our coaches and our players to deliver the success we all want. I can’t promise there won’t be a mega multi-million pound sale of any of our players as let’s not be naïve in the current world of football. And let’s not forget the damage inflicted upon our dressing room in the past when we tried our best to postpone that inevitable sale of a top asset. But I can promise our recruitment policy is always alive and kicking and ready to bring in that next star in the making which always reminds us that no one player makes a football team. Our future is not just about on-field success but many other important variables such as further investment in the training facility, in our youth set-up, on the football pitch at London Road, financial sustainability and most importantly buying London Road back once all development has taken place. Commercially the club is growing at an incredible pace as opposed to the majority of other league clubs, our percentages grow year on year in every area which is testament to the work done by Bob Symns and his staff, particularly in a financial environment that still has not 100 per cent recovered. So as is usual I shall of course throw out a list of aims/objectives for the upcoming season which are always based on reaching for the stars and should we fall short on some, that shortness will hopefully be the envy of many other league football clubs: So fasten those seat belts for what I’d like to be a real career-defining season for our management staff and players and one our supporters can look back on with great pride. Keep it Posh! Darragh === More season preview interviews, features and stats in our free 24-page #ComeOnBoro Posh supplement in this week’s (August 7) Peterborough Telegraph. === Darragh’s aims and objectives: - Be consistent. - Play a fun brand of football our supporters will enjoy. - Win a lot of second-halves and score a lot of late goals. - Championship football for our club. - Scoring over 100 league goals. - Having two strikers score 30 goals each for the season. - Golden Boot winner. - League One Player-of-the-Year. - Finally have a defender in League One team of year. - Defend our Johnstone’s Paint Trophy as best we can. - Make some serious money from cup runs as opposed to the previous eight campaigns I’ve run the club. - Be in a position come end of the season to finish the final phases of our training facility & order a special new pitch for London Road. - Have no regrets on and off the field."
Always good to hear from Darragh, his attitude towards the Posh is exciting as usual, but do I detect some more mature thoughts from him this season?
Absolutely. There are reports we have bid £750,000 for Hartlepool's Luke James, he scored 16 goals in a struggling team last season. (This also happens to be the amount needed to trigger a release clause in his contract).
He is 19 years old (20 later this year) and has been with Hartlepool since he was 11 and was their player of the year last season
