FARSLEY boss Adam Lakeland admits his club could have done without the extra week's wait for the Evo-Stik League season to begin.

The Celts host Coalville Town today in their first game back in the Premier Division after promotion last campaign.

Pre-season matches have provided good tests for Lakeland, his assistant Mark Bett and their new-look squad.

But the manager said: “Every league apart from ours and the Premier League started last weekend, so it’s a bit of a disappointment that we have to have this delay.

“In the last couple of weeks of pre-season the players are always raring to go. They have done all of the hard yards with the running and training and have got match sharp in the warm-up games. They just want to play.

“It’s always a difficult time – keeping the balance right – because they are so motivated they want to be playing competitive football.

"There is a lot of excitement around in the dressing room and at the club in general and they see their mates and former team-mates all playing League or FA Cup games.

“It feels a bit flat having to play another friendly on that Saturday. I really don’t understand why the Evo-Stik League do it. It’s always seemed odd to me.

“Everyone from the Championship down has started and we have to wait another seven days.

"It doesn’t make sense to me because there are a lot of games in the three divisions in this league and there will be some games postponed over the worst months of the winter, so why not start as early as possible?”

Not everything has gone Farsley’s way in pre-season and Lakeland has been left disappointed with a couple of performances.

However, he insists that is the reason why they arranged such difficult games.

The Celts boss said: “It’s no good breezing through pre-season by overloading the warm-up games with teams from steps below on the pyramid. That’s why we wanted games against good sides.

“The Evo-Stik Premier Division is a difficult league and we needed to be tested in the run-up. The games against York City, Harrogate Town and Bradford Park Avenue did that.

“We drew our final friendly last Saturday at Mossley, a side from the division below us, but again it's never easy going there as I’ve found down the years.

"I’m not reading too much into that result because we had a lot of players missing.”