7:00am Saturday 24th July 2010
By Chris Flanagan
DAVE O’Neill hopes Accrington Stanley can challenge for promotion this season after improvements to the pitch he believes ultimately cost them a play-off spot last term.
Outgoing chairman Ilyas Khan has paid £70,000 for the Crown Ground playing surface to be levelled and relaid this summer in a bid to end the problems thatcaused eight first-team matches to be postponed last season – many because of waterlogging issues in one penalty area.
The Reds have lost out on gate income after calling off Tuesday’s scheduled friendly at home to Burnley because the pitch will not be ready in time.
But managing director O’Neill, who shares John Coleman’s ambition to reach League One, is confident the new surface will avoid a backlog of fixtures.
Coleman’s side had several games in hand at the end of last term, meaning they never broke into the top seven at any point despite looking like promotion challengers, and struggled for results during a hectic run-in.
“We’ve got to look at another promotion minimum, definitely, and we were so close last year,” said O’Neill.
“We would definitely have been in the play-offs if the games hadn’t been cancelled when they were.
“But we’ve spent a lot of money on the pitch and in terms of fulfilling fixtures hopefully we should be on line this year.
“We’re quite happy with the work done but I walked on the pitch and just felt the Burnley game would do too much damage at this stage.”
Stanley have hastily arranged a friendly at Northwich Victoria this afternoon at 3pm after their early exit from the Joma South West Challenge in Devon.
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