POPPIES boss Phill Brown is hoping that his youthful additions can help his side break into the top 10 of the Wessex Premier next term.

Brown, who took charge of the Victoria Park outfit prior to the start of last campaign, hopes the addition of talents such as Charles Medway and brothers Joe and Lewis Freak will allow Poppies to build upon last season’s 18th placed finish.

Speaking to the Daily Echo, Brown stated: “We wanted to go with young, hungry players instead of the ones that are going to cost us an absolute fortune because we haven't got the sort of money that most of the Portsmouth sides do – just look at AFC Portchester, who have signed Bret Pittman, god knows how much money is he on.

“But that's where we want to go with. We've got a core of like 13 players that we had last year, and we wanted to add youngsters who are hungry, and fit and ready to go for this league next year.

“From a committee sort of side, there isn't an aim, we just obviously try and stay in the league. The only aim that is on me and my assistant Keith (West), we want to try and get to the top 10.

“That is our aim for this year. We think we could probably do that because we were looking at the results that we had last year and we were losing or drawing a game we thought we probably could have picked up three points instead of one possibly, so if we could turn them little results into wins, I think we aren't going to be too far away from next year where we want to aim for.”

Winton-based Poppies are well underway in their preparations for the season opener away at Portland United on Tuesday, August 2, with Brown pleased with what he has seen so far from his charges.

“It’s going well - a lot of new players trying to gel really,” Brown restarted.

“I thought we'd done really well against Wimborne. They’re a league above, a lot fitter than us at the minute, we’ve only been back in pre-season for a couple of weeks.

“We've got a lot of new players to try and gel, a lot of new players, new faces. So pre-season is going alright at the moment.”