Dover Athletic start their National League campaign with a trip to face Chesterfield, and boss Andy Hessenthaler just can’t wait to get going.
In the first of our weekly briefings with the Dover boss, Hessenthaler told KSN, “Pre-season is done now, and we’ve all got to the stage where you want the pressure of getting the three points.”
“Pre-season has been all about getting minutes into legs and identifying a way of playing philosophy and now we’re into the season proper we’ll see how far we’ve come.”
“We’ve had a good pre-season although you can’t read too much into the results – I’ve had an unbeaten pre-season before and then lost the first four or so League games. That said, it’s a good base to go into what is a very tough start for us as we face ex League clubs in our first four games starting at Chesterfield on Saturday.”
“The boys have worked really hard during the last few weeks to get their fitness levels up and they’ve now got to take into what is our longest month of the season which I still find bizarre – we’ve got nine games between now and September 3rd when we play Ebbsfleet which is our ninth game of the season.”
“It’s crazy but fortunately we’ve built a decent squad and my struggle this weekend isn’t picking a team, it’s who to leave out on the subs bench with so many good players which is a great position to be in.”
“We’ve got to make sure that everyone is part of it especially with so many games coming at us. I’m not saying that I’m going to rotate things, but we’ve got to be mindful of injuries and the fact that recovery time from Saturday to Tuesday isn’t very long!”
“There are other teams going in with sixteen or seventeen players and I’m sure that it’s going to be tough on them.”
“It could have been nicer with a home game first, but we’ve got Dagenham at Crabble on Tuesday after Saturday, but then we’re at home to Wrexham and away to Barnet, but we’re looking forward to it.”
“Hopefully we can go under the radar a bit especially early on – we’ve made some very astute signings in the summer – they’ve got some good pedigree, the boys who we’ve brought in – and I think we’ll be quite happy to go in as underdogs especially against some of the teams who have got a bit more pressure on them!”