Salford City kick-off their pre-season schedule with an away trip to Belfast on Sunday to take on Crusaders in The Billy Joe Burns Testimonial.
In the lead up to this Sunday’s opening fixture at Seaview, we caught up with Karl Robinson to find out how this first week of pre-season is going.
“We have made some really good signings, I think we’re down the road with some really good players and in a good place. Controlling the budget is important, we cannot get carried away with that, we’ve got to make sure that everything fits the purpose and the structure of the football club, and we’ve got to work hard to make sure that we do that in different ways.
The game in Ireland is going to be difficult, the Crusaders game is a testimonial so there is a different way of looking at that, so I won’t really be using that for any judgement towards any of our players.
“When we come back we will play Bamber Bridge and FC United, the FC United game is one we are looking forward to, and then we’ve got Warrington Town and Altrincham and we start building our way up into the really competitive games.
“Having Everton here is a big one for us, we hope the stadium will be full, so from a revenue perspective that will help as well. And then Preston will be a real challenging game, and then building to Rochdale away before the season starts.
“The fixture list is something you can never control, and I don’t really worry about it, but if you look at the first four games, I think if you look at the favourites for the league, I think we are certainly playing all of the favourites right at the beginning of the season, so that is I think a really good way of starting.”
STREAM LINKS >>> Stream 1 Stream 2 Stream 3
We have to act like we want to be promoted, but talking about promotion is the most ridiculous and ludicrous thing I think in the world to consistently ask for.
“People always speak about the future, but the future is so far away that we forget about the present, and the present is how hard are you going to work today, how hard are you going to work tomorrow, and when the next day comes what are you going to put into that?
“All we care about is Port Vale, once that is done, who’s next, and that mentality will build you up enough points, if you build them up right to get promotion, and that will be earned.”
