THE signings that we have made through the close season have, I think, strengthened the squad.

We have lost a number of players, a couple of whom - Mark Robinson and Andy Tretton - we would like to have kept but things move on and I am quite happy with the calibre of the players that we have brought in.

Pre-season games have gone almost as expected and as the matches went on we got stronger. In the first game, not long after we started training, Bristol City were far too strong but as the games progressed we got stronger and better organised.

There are still one or two elements of team play that we have got to put right but the hard graft has been done and it's just a sharpening process through the final week of preparations.

Following a great turn-out at the open day, I have never before met so much optimism from supporters. There is such an air of buoyancy from them and about the place.

The bookies have made us pre-season favourites and it all adds to the pressure to achieve something this season. While we have had two decent seasons with a style of football which supporters, in the main, have enjoyed watching - and finishing runners-up in any division is still quite an achievement - we have failed at the final hurdle.

So expectations of the coming season are that much greater.

Other clubs' awareness of us will continue to grow. The season before last, when we put nine past Dagenham & Redbridge and had other great results, it alerted everyone to the quality of our play. And the fact that the bookies have made us favourites will alert opposing clubs that we are a threat. Sides will lift themselves against us.

We tend not to look too far ahead. We divide the season into seven segments of six matches and there will be individual targets for players in scoring goals, team targets in goals against and goals for, clean sheets and not conceding goals from set-pieces so there is a collective responsibility in certain situations.

I don't think it will be difficult for people to work out where the threats are going to come from with Stevenage, Morecambe and Aldershot. One or two dark horses will come through - it could be Grays or someone like Burton Albion.

It would not surprise me to see Kidderminster up there. Stuart Watkiss has signed a number of experienced players, I'm told they have a decent-sized playing budget and Stuart himself proved at Mansfield that he is an astute manager. But it's nice to have them back with us.