Shirebrook Town looking to 'spring a surprise' next season

Shirebrook Town were narrowly beaten by Eastwood CFC last year, with joint boss Simon Dixon believing his side 'are not far away'

Town finished second bottom of the voided EMCFL Premier Division table after a season of struggles for the young side.

But Dixon, who took over as manager alongside Steve Bates on 30th January, hopes good old fashioned coaching will be enough to revive the club’s fortunes.

“We want to get up the table,” said Dixon, who holds a Uefa B coaching licence. “The challenge is to steer us further up the league. We know the task in hand and we think we can improve the players we have got.

“The younger players can be improved and you can still teach old dogs new tricks.

“Everybody doesn’t know everything and we are hoping to bring a style of play in and play football.

“We are hoping to spring a surprise next season. We only got narrowly beat by leaders Sherwood and also at home to Eastwood - on another day we would have got a draw with Eastwood.

“We heard that one of the Eastwood strikers was on £250, we had a £10 win bonus that day.”

But Dixon also knows the Langwith Road side need a bit more quality and players who have experience at step six level.

“We came in very late in the season and the emphasis was to keep the club up,” he added.

“The squad that we inherited were struggling and were a lot of young lads. We bought a lot of players from step seven sides to bolster the squad up.

“We found the league a bit more physically challenging and we will definitely be looking at adding a bit of quality and some lads that have already played at this level.”

His task is not made any easier by the fact that Shirebrook do not pay players and are up against some big hitters.

But he knows the fans can play their part in helping Town overcome the financial odds.

Said Dixon: “There has been a big turnaround at Shirebrook, if the young players are really decent they will go and play for the bigger clubs with more of a budget.

“Teams like us, Teversal and Rainworth have to rely on the youth as we will never have big budgets like some of the other teams.

“It is a lovely compact ground, the fans are right next to the pitch. When we first got there they were getting gates of 60.

“We got a win in our first game, they hadn’t won at home all season and the crowd started thinking they would come and watch again.

“We are looking to get the crowds up even more and get the locals back.

“If we can get bigger crowds in it will help us be able to pay for some players. We rely on crowds, it is not going to be big budgets.

“It would be lovely to get 200 every home game.”

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