We can today confirm that men’s first-team manager David Martindale will continue at the helm for our 2024/25 Championship campaign.

There is no getting away from the fact that this season has been disappointing. Every single member of staff inside the building is hurting with how the year transpired and we know full well that the same disappointment and upset is shared amongst our supporters.

However, we now have an opportunity to regroup, both on the park and in the stands, but we can only do with everyone pulling in the same direction.

David has been involved with the coaching set-up here for almost ten years now. His involvement in the dugout has seen us lift a League One title, win the Premiership play-offs, two top-6 finishes, two seasons just missing out on the top 6 on the final game before the split, a national cup final appearance and a club record 6 consecutive seasons in the top flight.

For a club of our size and stature, that is an incredible return – and a list of achievements that David deserves huge credit for.

As your Board, we believe that David has earned the right to remain as first-team manager and have the opportunity to try to steer us back to the Premiership.

His commitment and dedication to the club over the years is unrivalled and whilst that alone can’t be the sole driver behind remaining in charge, his qualities as a manager, as a coach and as a leader give us full confidence that David is the man we want in charge of this football club going forward. We are acutely aware of the budget constraints that David was working under this season. Losses in the previous two years meant that we had to convince club auditors that we could remain viable in the 2023/24 season and the only way to do that was to reduce the clubs budget across all departments.

Such is the nature of football that everyone has an opinion and some people will have a differing opinion to ours. However, with this decision now made and the hard work continuing off the field, we need our supporters to put this season to bed, understand that as a club it’s been an undoubted disappointment to drop a division, but now start to look to the season ahead and the new challenge we face.

We believe we have the core of a very good squad and with the addition of further targets that the manager has identified, we will give ourself a real good chance of being right in the mix come the end of next season.

We’re excited at the challenge we face. With that, we’ll have a different pressure on all of us next season but there’s a real, positive energy within the club that we can take this year of adversity and use that to channel a successful promotion push. Having that same, positive energy in the stands from the fanbase can make such a vital difference on match day. We need to get back to that united feeling of “us against the world” which was what got us into the Premiership in the first place.

Off the field, we have a terrific group of staff who now have multiple years of experience running a Premiership club. We will take that Premiership professionalism into the Championship and look to keep those standards to support the teams return to the top flight.

We ask you all to join us in giving your full backing to the manager, his coaching staff and the players as we look to get back to winning ways, have a successful season on and off the pitch and return the club back to the top flight at the first attempt.

John Ward & Dave Black.

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