Full pre-season has benefited Linnets midfielder

Adam Lakeland believes King’s Lynn Town fans will see Tommy Hughes at his best after getting a full pre-season behind him.The former Ipswich Town midfielder endured a torrid time last season where he made just 14 starts because of injury.Lakeland feels the 23-year-old has benefited greatly from getting a full programme under his belt as he takes his side to Alfreton in the National League North tomorrow.Hughes was another one of the shining lights in the 3-1 victory over Warrington last weekend and after the game Lakeland said: “I think that’s probably a result of him having a full pre-season, being fitter, being stronger, probably being more confident.”I think he missed large parts of last pre-season. I think he missed all of the pre-season and he was still injured when we came in at the start of October.”You’re generally always playing catch up if you miss pre-season and you’ve also got to remember that he’s still young.”He was in a team that was struggling last year, so I think it was probably a difficult 12 months for him. “But I think all the lads that are still with us from last season certainly like the younger, less experienced players, are much better players now for having those challenging times and adversity makes you stronger in anything you do. “We’ve played him a little bit deeper in pre-season because we kind of knew that’s how we wanted to go in midfield with it, with the one lower and two higher and it’s not natural to Tommy to play that that low.”You want to get him a little bit higher up the pitch if you can and today he did very well.”It just shows the strength and depth that we’ve got because Josh McCammon has played there pretty much all pre-season and has been very good. “Josh is a top player but we just felt today that it was right to start with Tommy and bring Josh on because later on we anticipated that the game might open up.”Josh is very good at driving with the ball from the middle of the pitch, but you know by the time we kind of got to that stage of the game, we were already in a pretty strong position.” Alfreton Town will be looking to bounce back from a 3-1 loss at Southport on the opening day of the new season while Lynn will be hoping to make it two wins from as many games.Reds boss Billy Heath, whose side has been beaten in the play-offs in the last two seasons, is currently overseeing his seventh campaign in charge at the Impact Arena.Last season, a Josh Coulson double enabled the Linnets to return home with a 2-0 win in Derbyshire.