The Curtain Comes Up At Salford This Afternoon

Welcome to the world of Salford City. The club who were playing in the North West Counties League Division One less than a decade ago. An era that when crowds got into three-figures, the chairman cracked open a beer in the boardroom after a match to toast a good day at the office.

How things have changed. We all know the story, and everyone has their opinion on it.

But whatever the viewpoint, it’s understandable why BT Sport have chosen the now-impressive Moor Lane, now of course the unrecognisable Peninsula Stadium, as the base to raise the curtain on the season on Saturday lunchtime.

Leyton Orient visit this weekend and the wait for the new campaign is finally over.

While a lot of the focus has fallen on Salford’s late summer shopping, one of the deals done early on in pre-season has maybe gone under the radar.

Danny Whitehead left National League champions Macclesfield and sacrificed an EFL place to try and do it all again. Though the shoe this time is on the other foot.

He said: “It wasn’t easy last year, everyone wrote us off, but we did well. It’s a different situation this time. I’ve got a bit of experience of playing in this league and winning it.

“My career has been very up and down so far but over the last two years, the main thing for me has been playing and getting back to enjoying it so I don’t really mind at the moment where I’m playing just as long as I’m enjoying it.

“I met with the manager (Graham Alexander) over the summer and the way he sees the club going and his vision is what I want to be a part of. It’s going to be great, but it’s going to be a tough season.

“Make no mistake, it’s going to be hard. Every game is going to be really challenging, there won’t be any easy games. Every team plays in a different way so it’s about how we adapt to them and work on it in training and hopefully we’ll be champions.”

With the high profile new additions, it’s sometimes easy to forget the calibre of manager the club's co-owners have employed.

Alexander, the former Scunthorpe and Fleetwood boss, could easily walk into an EFL job. Instead, he agreed to spearhead the next part of the Ammies well-publicised adventure.

“The expectation at the club is similar to what it’s been for the past three or four seasons and that’s success,” he told the National League’s Oli Osborn. “We’re not going to hide away or shy away from that fact, but we have to earn it [success] and you only earn it through hard work so we’ve put the building blocks in place.

“There’s a lot of good teams at this level, I think it’s an extremely competitive level, it’s got many good players, many good managers and good set ups and we’re going to have to be at the top of our game to compete with them but I think it’s always important to have ambitions, strong ambitions but also realistic ones. I believe we have but we just need to focus on the work now.

“It’s not just what you do on the pitch, it’s off it. The training ground and the social time together. We’re really fortunate that we’ve got a fantastic training venue we’ve just moved into where we’ve got our own building, so we eat together, we train together, we work hard together, and we socialise together so we’re really fortunate to have that and it’s worked well for us.

“You see it at the tables when we’re eating lunch and there’s never a pattern of who sits with who and that is a great sign that the new and the old are all just mixing in and working hard and that’s great to see from a manager’s perspective. The fundamental of football is competition, so we’ve got to compete with each other as well, if we compete with each other at a high level, harder than our opponents will, then we’ll be in good shape.”

He used to battle Justin Edinburgh on the EFL touchlines against Newport, Northampton and Gillingham but with so much focus on this match country-wide he knows the size of Saturday and the momentum which could be gained from a day one victory.

“I think all first games are exciting, especially the start of the season,” he said. “Everyone has got that new season feel and that optimism of having a successful season so I’m looking forward to it as much as anyone but I’m enjoying the work we’ve got in place.

“Our work is focusing on our team and getting our performance right and if we get that right, hopefully it’ll be a performance that’s good enough to win our games.”

PHOTOS BY CHARLOTTE TATTERSALL