King's Lynn boss begins squad rebuild after Wealdstone defeat in National League

King’s Lynn Town manager Tommy Widdrington is ready to rebuild for a challenge in the National League North.

Work is already under way at The Walks to ensure they can challenge to make an immediate return to the National League

Striker Gold Omotayo scored his sixth goal in as many games on Saturday but it couldn’t prevent Lynn from slipping to 2-1 final day defeat at Wealdstone.

Looking ahead to what is likely to be a busy summer, Widdrington, who will continue discussions with Stephen Cleeve, said: “It will be sometime next week, but I have had initial chats with the chairman giving him ballpark names that I want to retain and ones who will have to move on, to better themselves for the benefit of their own careers.

“As much as I like the lads, I don’t want to keep people who aren’t going to be pushing and pushing to be playing every week, so there will be people who move on.

“Ultimately the ones who stay will be the ones who want to stay and who we feel will give us the best chance we have of getting back to the National League as quickly as we can – basically, next season.”

The Lynn boss believes if he’d arrived earlier then the club would have perhaps beaten the drop.

“The stats will tell you we did the right thing as long as we could while we were in the building,” he said.

“Does it give me any solace? No, because ultimately, we came here to try and keep the club in the division and I have to say I didn’t achieve that as a manager and the team didn’t achieve that.

“I have got no qualms about taking responsibility for being in charge at the end, but we weren’t in charge at the beginning and that’s something – if we had been left in 16th 17th place with that amount of games to go, there is no way on this planet the club would have gone down, trust me on that. But we weren’t.

“We were marooned almost, the ship was more than sinking, the top end of it was sticking out of the water. We managed to get it on an even keel then we started ploughing forward.

“I am really thankful to the lads who, whether they knew me or didn’t know me before we came here, they tried their damnedest what they could, with the facilities they had at their disposal, with the touch time we had in training.

“I think the support from the fan base has just grown and grown and grown in the short space I have been here and the love they have given me has been unbelievable to be honest.

“I am only doing what I think is right – they’ve seen something in it that was obviously different to when we were here so that is a positive going forward.”

Widdrington had no complaints about Saturday’s defeat in the capital, saying: “You can use the term game of two halves, a season of two halves, and that’s exactly what it is. Excellent in the first half of the game, and I just didn’t think we got back to the level that we attained in the first half.”