Nunn pleased with the attitude as Diamonds report back for pre-season

Chris Nunn and his staff put the players through their paces with the Diamonds boss revealing that four more new signings are set to be announced over the coming days.

Nunn is gearing up for his first full season in charge at Hayden Road with Diamonds ready to play in the Northern Premier League Midlands following their relegation from the Southern League Premier Central in the 2022/23 campaign.

It was a tough season on and off the pitch for Diamonds but, once Nunn had settled in after arriving at the club at the end of last year, he did oversee an encouraging final few weeks although it wasn’t enough to save the club from a return to Step 4.

However, as he welcomed his players back, Nunn was left feeling positive by what he saw in the opening session.

“I was really pleased,” he said.

“You have to be very careful when it comes to pre-season training.

“I have been in before over the years I have been managing and you can sometimes get over confident and believe you have an amazing team just as much as you might think you are going to be in a bad place.

“You have to be level-headed and I came away from the first session and I was pleased.

“The effort and attitude and the environment the boys created was exactly what I wanted.”

Diamonds have already confirmed the likes of Michael Harriman, Luke Massingham, Ryan Hughes, Will Glennon, Mitchell White and Ben Gough have agreed to stay on with the club while frontmen Ethan Johnston and Will Jones have arrived as new signings.

And, with more new additions to come, Nunn isn’t expecting to look at too many trialists in pre-season and instead focus on finalising his squad.

A busy pre-season friendly schedule for Diamonds, which features eight matches, gets under way a week on Saturday (July 8, 3pm kick-off) when they head to Real Bedford who won the Spartan South Midlands League Division One title last season.

And Nunn added: “I am not into open sessions and trials and all of that.

“My job as manager is to try to identify players without having to go through a load of trialists.

“We are probably not far away from what we can do.

“We might be short of an experienced midfielder but I am just going to have to wait and see if one becomes available.

“We are still in June at the moment so I am certainly not panicking.

“I feel very comfortable with where we are and with what we have got.

“I don’t think we can do more than what we have done at this stage.

“I know we have to make it an ‘us against the world’ culture if we are to compete with some of the teams in our league.

“The boys we have got have already shown an excellent attitude and it was nice and positive in that first session.”