Bradford (Park Avenue) content if North Ferriby not the peak

He feels confident that his methods will bear fruit in the long run, and cited a previous promotion with Macclesfield as a reason to keep the faith in him and his squad.

Avenue’s first league game of the season comes tomorrow afternoon against North Ferriby at Horsfall, with the pressure on the hosts to go up after two successive demotions.

But the majority of the 2024/25 squad did not play any part in those last couple of seasons, and Whitaker told the T&A: “What’s gone on in the past has gone on in the past, that’s done and you can’t change any of that.

“You’ve got to look forward and we’ve built a squad that we think is capable of winning football matches, and we’ll keep adding to it as the season progresses.

“We have the freedom to do that, and we’ll always be looking to strengthen, if there are players available to us who are better than what we already have.

“But at the minute, we’ve got these players in the building that we have and they’re all fighting for the shirt, which they’ve shown in games and training so far.

“We don’t want to be anywhere too soon, and while we want to be ready for the start of the season, we want to build into it.

“I went through something similar before when I was in charge at Macclesfield, where we put together a squad from nothing.

“Come the start of that season, it was just about winning games and getting points on the board.

“We didn’t really get going until November or December time, where you started to see the proper football team.

“By then, they knew each other’s strengths really well, and how we wanted to play and move the ball about.

“That might be the case again here, hopefully it clicks sooner, but you never know.

“As long as we’re winning games, it doesn’t really matter.”

Kareem Hassan-Smith (2) is one of Avenue's new signings, and he linked up well with Oli Norman down the right when they took on a Bantams XI at Horsfall last month. (Image: Tom Pearson.)

The new signings who have talked to the T&A ahead of the new season have mentioned a sense of unity already among the squad, despite many of them having never met until a couple of months ago.

While Whitaker is happy to play the long game, it pleases him that there are signs the squad has gelled perhaps quicker than expected, with three wins and a draw in their opening four pre-season games, before they rounded off the summer programme by beating Hinckley Leicester Road 2-1 last Saturday.

He said: “That’s definitely a good sign, but then we played better against Bradford City (in a 3-0 defeat) than against Golcar United (a 1-0 win) a few days earlier.

“But you have to take into account the amount of new faces and trialists we used in pre-season, especially early on.

“I do think we’re going in the right direction, but it is a process.

“The players won’t suddenly understand each other’s games by the flick of a switch.

“Some will be flying on all cylinders by the North Ferriby game, some won’t be, but that’s how it goes.

“I firmly believe we’ll get to where we want to be, it just takes time.”