Poole confident he can turn it around after '˜challenging' first month at Aylesbury FC

The former Thame Rangers boss was appointed last month when he took over from previous manager Davis Haule, who stepped down from the position following a poor run of form that saw the Moles lose seven of nine games since the turn of the year.

The recent bad weather across southern England has restricted Poole to just three games in charge, defeats against Marlow, Hartley Wintney and most recently Kempston Rovers on Saturday, and he admitted it hasn’t all been plain sailing since his arrival.

“It’s been difficult because when I came in we had about seven players so I’ve had to bring my own guys in as much as I could through contacts I’ve had in football,” he explained.

“We’ve also had to try to get the players up to the required fitness levels in a short space of time which has been challenging. Ability-wise, I don’t think that we’ll have a problem. You need longer than a couple of weeks to settle in, and you really need a good pre-season but unfortunately we haven’t been able to have that.”

The FC boss has revealed the primary objective after his appointment was to steady the ship, something he feels he has successfully achieved despite poor results.

“The short-term objective was to give the team stability and I think that was the only thing we could do,” he added.

“To come into a team with seven players at this level is incredibly difficult. Just to get a team out was the first step.

“Now we’ve managed to do that we’ve got a reasonable crop of players that we can pick from so hopefully from here we can go on to start competing more and looking to get victories.

“I’ve looked at the remaining fixtures and there’s certainly three or four that we should be aiming to win.”

Wins have been hard to come by in recent times with the Moles managing just five goals in 12 games in 2018, and Poole has acknowledged that attacking reinforcements are required ahead of next season.

“We’re looking to strengthen upfront”, he said. “To put it simply, you don’t win games without scoring goals so it’s definitely a problem that we’re looking to address.

“We haven’t managed to score while I’ve been in charge. Although we’ve

had our chances, for one reason or another they haven’t gone in so it’s an area that we’re looking to improve.”

Poole’s team were beaten by a goal in each half at Kempston on Saturday when Jordan Rogers and Robbie Goodman were both on target to extend FC’s winless run to 13 games, leaving them down in 18th in the Southern League East Division.

Aylesbury host Bedford Town this weekend.