Danny Edwards admits his Chalfont St Peter team have had a “disappointing” campaign after their early season promise faded away.

Saints occupied a play-off spot in Southern One Central at the turn of the year but a 12 game winless run, coupled with the departure of key players, saw them freefall down the table as they finished 16th.

Edwards, who’s in his 12th year in charge at Mill Meadow, admits that his side’s winless run was difficult to take, particularly given their form in 2014.

He said: “At the Christmas social we went out for a few drinks with the players, we were in the play-offs at the time and they were very passionate about kicking on. Reflecting on it, maybe we were a little bit above ourselves and where we should have been.

“We had a fantastic run but in January and February we played a lot of the teams in the lower reaches of the league and we didn’t take three points enough which probably ended our season by mid-February.

“We had some difficult injuries. We lost Alan Hedley, Gareth Paxton, Anthony Page went back to Harrow, Mike McEntegart went to Welling and we lost some real key personalities.”

The Chalfont boss took heart from his team’s end to the season which saw them unbeaten in five games, the last of which was a 0-0 draw at home to champions Kettering Town on Saturday.

Edwards will now turn his attentions to “silly season” as he calls it, with the Saints boss targeting a number of areas in his squad that he would like to strengthen.

“We’ve had a conversation with the squad that we’ve currently got and most of them have said they’d like to come back which makes life easier for us,” Edwards said.

“We know that we have some key areas to fill. Losing Anthony Page at centre half was a big blow because of his physicality and his aerial ability, which we need to replace. We need quality in the wide areas to deliver from set pieces.

“Tony Mendy’s come in and been fantastic with Aaron Lansiquot but we’d like another striker to add competition for place, and some competition for Mikey Pearce in goal, having lost McEntegart to Welling.”

Edwards is used to the upheaval that the off season brings, but he hopes to avoid making the rash decisions that a lot of non-league managers will inevitably make.

“It’s like a little bit of hell because you’re talking to players who will have six phone calls and you’re not even that bothered about signing them in the first place,” he said.

“Managers panic, managers have always panicked and will continue to panic at this level of football. We don’t want to do that.

“Once we get our friendlies in place and we’re sorted we’ll go out – we’ve got targets which we’ve identified and we’ve spoken to most of them already.”