Belper Town target ‘top quality’ additions this summer, says boss Grant Black

The Nailers still hope to have a say on the play-off picture with four games of the current campaign still to play.

Yet Black and his coaching team have already identified specific areas where they can make improvements come August.

“We’re always looking at improving,” said Black.

“No matter how well you do there’s always areas to improve and we’ve got our minds on a few positions.”

Black expects to make minor tweaks to the playing squad this summer following a complete overhaul last year.

“I don’t think there’ll be the turnover that there was last summer when we came in and had to bring in 18 new players,” he said.

“If we can bring in three or four top quality players in to add to what we’ve got then I don’t think we’ll be a million miles away.

“We’ve already got two or three of them tied down so hopefully it won’t be as busy a summer as it was last year.”

Belper put a big dent in Cleethorpes Town’s hopes of creeping into the play-offs with a 1-0 win on Saturday.

“We had a game plan and all 14-15 players stuck to that game plan.

“We frustrated them and made it difficult for them to break us down.

“We looked really dangerous when we counter-attacked as well.

“The clean sheet was very pleasing and we could have even scored more goals - we could have been more clinical in front of goal,” said Black who moved captain Alex Peterson from centre-half to centre-forward.

Peterson scored the game’s only goal.

“I was really pleased for him. He’s probably a victim of his own success and good attitude.

“He’s played at centre-half in large periods of this season because we can trust him and we know he’ll do a good job there.

“He is a striker and we know that.

“There have probably been times this season when he’s been frustrated playing at centre-half.

“We thought the way that Cleethorpes set up and attack that Danny South would be better suited for centre-half and Alex could do the business up front, which he did and Southy played well at the back.”

Belper travel to face Stamford on Saturday before coming up against play-off contenders Ossett United at home and Sheffield FC away over coming Saturdays.

Black added: “We want to finish as high as we can.

“If we were in the other dressing room and we could get into the play-offs people would want to stop us doing it.

“We’ll be looking to do that over the next few weeks to make it a fair play-off race for everyone.

“We’ve got a group of lads who have got a lot of pride and they’ll be champing at the bit to win as many games as they can between now and the end of the season, to set us up on a positive note for next season.”