Oldham Athletic captain Peter Clarke is optimistic about the next coming season for the club.
The defender, who signed a two and a half year contract extension yesterday joins the likes of Aaron Amadi-Holloway, Anthony Gerrard, Ollie Banks and Ousmane Fane to name a few, who are signed up to the club for the next campaign.
Clarke said: "I think it’s a real statement of intent, they’ve committed their futures like myself and we believe there's something building and hopefully some good times around the corner.
“We believe there’s good players in the dressing room and I’m sure come the summer they’ll be some more hopefully coming in too.
"But we believe there’s a good nucleus here and hopefully given a good full pre-season we can then start to build, so long as we get the hard yards in and the next four or five weeks to make sure we maintain our status in this division.”
The skipper has played every minute in every League One game so far this season and has scored five goals in the process.
The team has only conceded 39 goals in the league, the third least in the division.
Clarke puts the defensive record down to the team around him: “We’ve got some decent boys back there everyone that’s played at the back knows there jobs, they know what they're to do.
“We’ve got good organisation and we’ve got a good goalkeeper behind us who is vocal.
“Both myself and Anthony [Gerrard] are both vocal as well so we’ll pull and push people and get them where they need to be and we’ll demand of ourselves.
“We’ll demand of each other, we’ll demand of those around us to be the best they can be and I think theres a real desire back there, almost a siege mentality that we don’t want to concede and anytime we do we’re disappointed.”
For now though, the captain is fully focused on the remainder of this campaign: “We’ve gone about our business well.
“We’ve picked up points when we’ve needed to and we've had some boys that have arrived in January that have certainly helped things as well.
“I’ve got every faith that we’re going to get enough points between now and the end of the campaign to make sure we maintain our status and then come the end of the campaign we can then start building and looking forward.”
Watch the full interview on Latics PlayerHD.