We've now got to up our game to win promotion, says Maidstone United boss Jay Saunders

MAIDSTONE UNITED manager Jay Saunders says he wants to get off to a good start in the league this season.

The Stones finished in seventh-place in the Ryman Premier League last season with 81 points from 46 games.

Saunders’ men finished 15 points behind champions Wealdstone and two points adrift of the play-offs.

The Stones kick-off their Ryman Premier League campaign with a home game against Metropolitan Police before travelling to Crayford to play last season’s Ryman League Division One North champions VCD Athletic three days later.

“That will be an interesting one,” Saunders said of the Police.

“They’re a hard team to break down and they normally set-up well and it will be a tough one without a doubt.

“But we’re at home and we’ve added quality this year and hopefully we’ll be able to kick on and get a good start.

“It’s a tough run-in. We’ve got them and then we go to VCD, who are a team coming up, which is always hard.

“I know Tony’s (Russell) got a good side there and they play the right way. It’ll be interesting. They’ll be full of confidence having just got promoted.  Teams coming up normally start well and have a good season in general and we’ll go to Bognor.

“They’re three really tough games, but you’ve got to play well in the league if you want to do well and we’ve got to do that.

“Every manager will tell you, we’ll be hoping for a good start but leagues aren’t won in the first part of the season and you only have to look at Wealdstone to see that!  They didn’t have a great start to the season and everyone sort of forgot about them at Christmas and went on an unbelievable run.

“I just like to get on a good start because it sets you up nicely. If you lose your first one it puts a little bit more pressure on to get that next win so we’ll be concentrating on that first one.”

Saunders admitted he was a frustrated man after drawing too many games at home last season.

“We’ve got to turn some of them into wins,” he said.

“I think at Christmas we hadn’t lost at home and we had the best defensive record away from home. 

“It was kind of frustrating that we couldn’t turn them into wins. I think if we had we could’ve gone on and been different and that’s all in the past now. We’ve got to move on.

“We know that teams are going to come to us and are going to set-up defensively and try to be hard to beat as you have to be sometimes.

“We’re going to have a bit more about us to break them down.”

Both Maidstone United and Margate will be battling it out for the Ryman Premier League title this season.

“Yes, you want to get promoted,” said Saunders.

“Don’t get me wrong, if you’re a small club with not a lot of fan-base and just come up, you’ll say you want to stay in the league.

“If you ask 99% of managers they’ll say play-offs or try and get promoted and that’s no different.

“There’s a lot of expectancy in the club from supporters, from outside people looking in, but we know what we want to do.  Players know what we want to do.

“They’re disappointed with how we dropped off. We didn’t have the squad last year. That’s why we’ve gone out and signed the guys we have and gone for a bigger squad.

“It will be tough. They’ll be some disappointed players come the first game of the season because they’ll be some left out of the squad and that’s going to be hard and I had that the year we won the (Ryman League Division One South) play-offs and we’ll have a little bit of that this year and hopefully the competition will keep us up there.

“We’ll certainly be going for promotion, whether that will be winning it or the play-offs’, that’s the plan.”

The Stones finished behind Wealdstone, Kingstonian, Bognor Regis Town, Lowestoft Town (promoted via play-offs), AFC Hornchurch and Dulwich Hamlet last season.

“There were six teams that finished above us in the league last year and they’ve all improved their squads so they’ll all be going to go for it again,” said Saunders.

“As much as I’m saying I want to go for promotion, everyone’s improved their squads.

“We finished seventh so we’ve now got to up our game as everyone else will and try and improve on what we did and push them.”

Meanwhile, Maidstone United lost their unbeaten run last night going down to a 2-1 home defeat to Conference Premier Welling United.

Next up for the Stones is a home game against Sutton United on Saturday (3pm).

Paul Doswell’s side finished runners-up to Eastleigh in the Conference South last season, but were defeated 4-1 on aggregate by Dover Athletic in the play-off semi-finals.

Visit Maidstone United’s website: www.maidstoneunited.co.uk