Harriers boss set for contract talks

Wednesday 29th April 2009, 7:45AM BST.

KIDDY 26 DH 5Kidderminster boss Mark Yates will sit down with the club this week to begin talks over a new contract for next season.

The management team’s deals are up on Saturday, along with the majority of the playing squad with the season officially over.

Such a situation is not uncommon in non-league football these days, as well as some of the lower echelons of the Football League – with the current economic climate most will only operate on a season-to-season basis to safeguard their future.

But that still leaves Yates and No 2 Neil Howarth free to walk away from the club by the end of the week.

Now the manager is set for talks with the powers-that-be at at Aggborough to see what is next.

He said: “I haven’t got a clue, everyone’s contracts are up next Saturday and we will see where we go from there.

“No one has spoken to me yet, but I will sit down over the next few days and see what happens.”

Yates refutes suggestions that he had been set a target of the play-off’s for the season, just three days after that quest was ended in heartbreaking fashion on the final day against Kettering at Aggborough.

If Harriers had won they would have achieved that goal, only for Ben Wright to steal it for Kettering in the 90th minute – after the home side had missed a host of chances.

The team ended up finishing sixth, two point and one place behind.

But significant progress has been made, 2008/09 was seven places better than an uneventful 2007/08.

The manager is well aware of how far his side have come.

He said: “If I had been set the target of the play-off’s with the budget I had, if that was the pre-requisite, then I would have had to been a miracle worker.

“We have got a bottom 10, bottom 12 budget – you look at some of the teams at the top and you can see the difference.

“It’s not about money and I am not moaning about it, but that is the way it is at this football club. So to get as close as we did shows how fantastically the lads have done this season.”



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