Bentley Is Ready To Write A Whole New Chapter With Fylde

AFC Fylde couldn't have hand-made someone who knew what emotion a tough separation could bring if they tried.

Jim Bentley was going through the exact same thing when the Coasters made contact last month.

Having spent 17 years at Morecambe, the popular manager had sympathy for the Mill Farm decision makers.

“Morecambe will always have a big place in my heart, it’s like a second home to me,” Bentley said. “But life is like that and nothing lasts forever – certainly in football it doesn’t.

“The time was right to come here, it’s a great project heading in the right direction. Hopefully I can develop that big ambition and help this club get to the next level because that’s what I want to do, that’s why I’ve come here.

“Morecambe was a great learning curve and a great place to cut my teeth in management, but I’ve moved on and I’m looking forward to the challenges that lie ahead here.

“I’ve got big boots to fill,” he continued. “Chally has done amazing. I know him really well.

“From the outside looking in, I have followed the club with Morecambe being just down the road.

“I spent 17-and-a-half years at one club, and it was my time to move on for one reason or another.”

It's a move that might have raised a few eyebrows in the footballing world. Why would a League Two manager leave one of the most safe seats in football?

But for Bentley, the drop in division is where the so-called step back ends.

“The lads are in a good place and they’re training well. We’ve got a lot of big games coming up and we need to pull ourselves away from the position we’re in," he said.

“The short-term is to win the next game, then it’s to pull away from the position we’re in because I don’t like talk of play-offs and promotion when we’re in a relegation battle.

“We can’t take our eye off the ball and look too far ahead. We need to start winning games first and foremost and when we start doing that, we can look, week by week, month by month at whether we have what it takes to make a late push for promotion – ultimately that’s what we want to do.

“If that’s too much for us this season we’ll have to wait and see but at the minute, we can’t even begin to think about that until we pull away from the bottom of the table.

“Football being the way it is you never know what’s around the corner,” he added.

“There’s nothing stopping any team building momentum, putting a run together and getting themselves in those top positions."

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