BRADFORD (Park Avenue) may be struggling at the wrong end of the table at the moment - but ambitious owner Gareth Roberts still hopes a return to the Football League could be possible in the future.

Off-field improvements remain a priority at Horsfall but the Avenue chief also said there is a hope playing budgets are to increase over the coming seasons.

Former Bradford City winger Garry Thompson was sacked as manager after just two games - heavy 5-0 defeats to both Curzon Ashton and Guiseley - and was replaced by Marcus Law as interim boss.

Law is still in the early process of stamping his imprint on the team, who have just one point from their opening five games in the Vanarama National League North.

But Roberts believes Avenue - who host the only club below them, Blyth Spartans, tomorrow before a trip to Darlington on Bank Holiday Monday - can ride the early storm and still has ambitious plans for the club.

He said: "We are trying to build for the future and the hope is we can get by this year with a modest budget and keep our deficit to a minimum.

"But we hope, over the next two or three years to be able to increase our playing budget, to become very competitive.

"But we need to get things that are off the field sorted out and build up the club so that we can afford a better team on the field.

"With the improvements that we’re talking about, we’d be ready to be promoted.

"It’s definitely a possibility and likely would be a goal more quickly than people would think."

Roberts has spoken at length about making Avenue self-sustaining, and first on the list of priorities for achieving that is securing a 35-year lease for Horsfall Stadium - something which is close to being sealed.

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Then, he believes the Football League could be on the horizon.

Roberts said: "Why not? We don’t have any limits on what we can do.

"It does depend really on how Horsfall gets developed, to become a proper little stadium that could handle Football League games.

"It could well. It can’t right now, but in the future there’s no telling that it might do."

The Bradford-born multi-millionaire has money at his disposal, but doesn't think the 'Salford City model' of pumping vast amounts of money is the way for them to go.

He said: "Well I don’t think we want to go into it quite that hard.

"We’ve got to build up our support, we’ve got to become a bigger part of the community than we currently are and get a lot more participation and crowds.

"Just simply we have to find a way to build that up.

"There’s no sense in going up to the Football League if you’ve got 350 fans."

Roberts knows there's a lot to do on that front, admitting the club has been running very large deficits due to disappointing revenues.

That is the main reason budgets have had to be slashed for the current campaign, but the owner is looking to rectify that.

He said: "We haven’t had big crowds and part of that is due to the fact that Horsfall is not a very inviting place in February and we need to make it a bit better.

"We need to have better quality offerings for families and our youth teams. We want to get our youth teams to start attending games and so on.

"We have to do a better job of that and that’s why the lease is a priority and that's why the stadium improvements are a priority."