Former Wrexham player Jonathan Brown is the lastest addition to Southport FC's squad for the new season.



The 21 year old winger put pen to paper for Sandgrounders after the club's first summer training session on Saturday.

Brown started his career at Cardiff City and has also played for the Wales under 21 side. He is the third player joining for Sandgrounders this summer after Simon Grand and Steven Akrigg joined the club.

Sandgrounders boss Liam Watson has announced the squad will stay part time next season but will be training more times a week as they hope to avoid the drop.

Southport play their first pre season match against Rochdale on Saturday 16th July.

Get your money on at the bookies for another relegation scrap..........

Originally Posted by ontheball

Sandgrounders boss Liam Watson has announced the squad will stay part time next season but will be training more times a week as they hope to avoid the drop.

.

How's that for negative thinking even before the season kicks off..?

Originally Posted by Birk Daley

Get your money on at the bookies for another relegation scrap..........

safe bet you wont get very good odds

So, the best we can hope for is that "they hope to avoid the drop".

I have never heard a comment from a manager with so little ambition in fifty plus years watching football. Liam Watson is an absolute disgrace and should walk away back to the day job.

Hmmm, pretty strong criticism of Watson's ambition being limited to 'avoiding the drop'. The only problem is .. ... he hasn't said that; it's simply something that ontheball said in his comments about the latest signing.

What Watson has actually said is

"We've decided to increase the amount of days we train and we'll be looking to sign Football League players rather than non league players. If you're going to take players from the Football League, their contracts run until 30 June," Watson continued. "But most of them stay so they can get a month's severance pay till 30 July. Don't get me wrong, we have strong base to work from. But whichever league we were in, there would have to be a fair amount of recruitment because we finished the season with 17 players.Five of those were out of contract and they've all been let go and there is one or two with interest from other clubs wanting to buy them.

This is the time we have got to start preparing the club for a possible return to full-time football and we’ve got to look at the way Burton Albion and Morecambe went about getting promoted,” he said. “You can’t just flick a switch and turn full-time instantly. We have also got to change our philosophy about the way we play football. The amount of games we lost in the 90th minute was costly. We became panic stricken in those situations, trying to clear our lines, when all we needed to do was keep the ball.

We’ve talked about changing the structure at the club and bringing in an additional night of training and bringing in better quality players,” he said. “The chairman has upped the budget a little bit. I’ve got to speak to the players and see if they want to be a part of it; if they do then great. I’m looking to bring in an experienced first team player-coach. I’ve got a few ideas popping round in my head as to who I would like to approach and who I think would be suitable for me and the club over the role.

I’ve made some tentative enquiries. I’ve also made progress with a few players and a couple have agreed terms with us but have yet to sign as they are away on holiday. There will also be scope for trialists this pre-season and I’ve probably got to leave behind the idea of recruiting players with non-league backgrounds and look to be bringing in players who have dropped out of the Football League.”

Nothing there about simply wanting to avoid the drop.

Yes , little funding, part time ..its men against the boys ..but a belated well done to the Port and Manager Liam for their valiant efforts last season .. even Crawley reverted to gamesmanship, the last 20 mins of each game the team tired drastically,just hope the extra nights training will help.. I may be naive but I enjoy watching my local team ... I am sure the detractors don't bother to come down to Haig Ave,its easy to criticise harder to support !!!.....