City of Liverpool manager Paul McNally has expressed his intent to keep building after securing another season in the Northern Premier League West.
McNally completed the feat with the Purps after taking charge as they sat at the foot of the table.
He helped guide them out of the relegation dogfight and on the verge of a top-half finish. To add to their progress, they ended the season unbeaten following draws with Runcorn Linnets, Mossley and Witton Albion, three teams vying for playoff places.
“It is a great achievement [finishing 12th] but it’s not an achievement I want, I’d like to be higher in the league,” he told Off The Park.
“An achievement for me would be getting into the playoffs or winning promotion but in the grand scheme of things, when we come in we were bottom with zero points and we finished on 46 points, it’s been hard transitioning through players, we’re finally making tracks but the main goal was to stay in the league.
“I don’t think anyone from sixth downwards was safe until the last week before the season ended, it was nice to get us over the line.”
Throughout the campaign, they picked up wins against Workington, Clitheroe as well as the emphatic win over Newcastle Town.
Their campaign has been described as a transitional phase but the City of Liverpool boss believes they have made progress.
He continued: “There’s been quite a few highs, a few memorable games, a few great team and individual performances, it hasn’t all been negative.
“We’ve also had our odd bad performances mixed in with that which you’re going to get when you’re transitioning. There’s been some highlights, Workington at home, Clitheroe, we went to my old club and won, it was nice to go there and win. We’ve had some good results but we’ve had some poor results.
“The expectations of the club before I took over was to finish a lot higher with the squad that they had and what they were implementing at the start of the season.
“When I took over, they wasn’t in the position they thought they would be in so expectations changed as the season progressed. It was more about can we turn this team over, try put points on the board and we did.
“From December, we wasn’t in the bottom four so this year, we haven’t been in the bottom four so it shows the progress from Septemeber to December as tough as it might’ve been, we’ve turned it around.
“We want to build and keep on carrying the momentum forwards, we finished the season unbeaten,” he added on his demands for next season. “Three draws but it was against three good teams, Runcorn Linnets, we were seconds away from winning, Mossley and Witton so three teams in and around there [the playoffs] so it’s a case of can we build on what we’ve got?
“There will be incomings and outgoings as there is at every club, pre-season is a silly time. Our expectations will be can we carry on and see where we go, we don’t want to be a bottom-half team, that’s not what we’re about.
“Hopefully next season we can push on into the top half then who knows where it takes us.”
[Featured Image: City of Liverpool]
