NEXT season can’t come quickly enough for AFC Totton chairman Andy Straker.

As the Stags head into their final home game against lowly Bishop’s Cleeve tomorrow, Straker admits the last nine months haven’t gone to plan.

Having got past what he describes as “the horrible stuff of the last two years” when the club were in financial crisis, he had expected Totton to thrive after relegation to the Southern One South & West.

But after an excellent start to the season, the Stags went backwards before coming strong again at the turn of the year.

But a nosedive in results prompted the departure of manager Steve Riley and a dire run of 13 games without a win leaves the one-time leaders 16th – just five points better off than neighbours Sholing who been glued in 17th since November.

Reflecting on a yo-yo season for the Stags, Straker said: “It’s not been as good as it could have been. I was hoping for so much more.

“It’s been skewed in a way because we had a fantastic August and then nothing and a fantastic January and then nothing. They were two false dawns.

“Sholing were saying just after Christmas that they’d had a disappointing season, whereas we were saying we could make the play-offs. But ultimately both of us have had the same sort of season.

“If we’d been plodding along getting a couple of results a month, expectations wouldn’t have risen and then disappointment wouldn’t have set in.

“There have been some big pluses like the sponsorship with New Century Bingo and we need to do more around that.

“Next season can’t come quickly enough for me.

“We’ve got the under-16, under-18 and reserve team managers in place and once we’ve got someone who’s going to take us forward as first-team manager, that will hopefully be the final piece of the jig-saw.

“We won’t be throwing thousands of pounds around a week, we’re a members’ club and we could never do that.

“We’ve got to keep our expectations level but, saying that, those expectations should be higher than they have been.”