Adam Lakeland and his assistant Sam Walker will be going the extra mile to deliver success at King’s Lynn Town.
Faced with a four-hour trip from their Lancashire bases to training and a home game at The Walks, the management team is ready to step on the gas to turn Lynn’s National League North season around.
Lakeland said: “I think sometimes opportunities come around in football and you’ve got to grasp them and you have got to back yourself.
“We’re both husbands and we’ve both got young families but we are both very fortunate that we’ve got the backing of two really supportive partners.
“If they give you the green light then you’ve got to back yourself and we see it as a good opportunity and one we are really looking forward to getting going.
“It’s an area of the country that we’re a little bit unfamiliar with, but I had the same when I first went into to Farsley Celtic. I didn’t really know that many people in Yorkshire but now I know pretty much all of them.
“Ultimately it’s my job down here to tap into the knowledge of some of the senior players, the chairman and one or two other people who are around the club who have got that knowledge of the area to make connections for Sam and myself.
“From there you know we’ll build relationships with local clubs and managers coaches and see if that can support us kind of going forward.”
Lynn’s new boss is enthused by both the quality and the mood of the Linnets squad, as he expressed his positive first impressions of his newly-inherited players following Friday’s first training session.
“It was all positive from my side,” said Lakeland.
“It was nothing too tactical or too much kind of information-based today it was more a case putting on a session with a decent intensity and tempo, just letting the players kind of see a structure to the way that we work and I thought they responded well to it.
“I’ve always believed that you need to train as you play and I think if you have lazy habits and you’re not training to the required levels, then it’s very it just transmits onto the pitch.
“It might be a different way of working for the players and it might take a little bit of time for them to get used to it physically and mentally.
“But they’re gonna have to get used to that quickly because I’m not going to change how I work because the way I work gets teams where they need to be.
“Next week we’ve obviously got a full week. We’ve given them the weekend off so they can, you know, have a bit of time just to push reset really.
“We’ve had a good chat and had some positive talks with the more senior players in the group and also with some of the lads who’ve been out injured.
“We’ve made them aware of how important they are to us really and how we want them back on the grass as quickly as we can.
“I’m pretty sure you come Monday, everybody will come in, chomping at the bit and ready to have a good week of training before that first game.”
Lynn are hoping for a lift under their new management team with the side currently inside the relegation places.
And Lakeland wants the club’s players singing off the same hymn sheet as a new era at The Walks begins.
“We’re hard-working and pride ourselves on that as blokes really,” he said.
“We’re driven, fair, I’d say, and honest and we’ll certainly work as hard as we possibly can.
“If you want to be successful and start cutting corners and try to do things by half you generally don’t get the output and the outcome that you want.
“We’re passionate and wear our hearts on our sleeves so to speak. We’ve got a lot of experience between, Sam more as a player and I’ve managed a hell of a lot of games now, over 150 games in this league, which is quite a lot for a 38-year-old.
“I think we’ve got the right experience that we need, the drive and the determination that we need and we’ve certainly got the work ethic as well.
“We just want a team really that reflects all of those things that we are as people; committed, want to win, want to work, want to work hard, resilient and gritty.
“If we can get the team reflecting you know those attributes combined with the quality that some of these players have, then there’s no reason why we can’t go and do well.”
