Hartlepool United manager Dave Challinor on misconceptions and rumours about his time at AFC Fylde

While Fylde were well backed to help them progress up the leagues under Challinor, their budget in the National League was perhaps slightly more modest than most would believe.

And Challinor feels The Coasters’ success and ambition is something that led many to the false assumption that their budget was one of the biggest in the fifth tier.

But it’s those assumptions that the new Hartlepool manager has taken as a positive.

“Absolutely, I take it as a compliment,” Challinor said.

“In football there’s lots of rumour, lots of speculation. The budget that is in place here this year, without saying anything out of the ordinary is more than what we won the FA Trophy with and got to the play-off final with at Fylde last year.

“With ambition, lots of people accrue that to having lots of money and something I’m not really fussed that I’ve been tarred with as a manager to be honest, it’s not something that massively affects me but the reality is that it’s not the case and hasn’t been the case.

“Whether it be players being asked what they’re on and putting an extra £200 on their wage or people speculating over budgets, that’s just the nature of things.

“People will continue to say what they want but what I’ll say is that I’m not concerned about other people, I’m concerned about people that are here at the football club and people who pay their hard earned money to turn up whether it be here or away from home to give their support to the team and as long as they’re happy with that, I’ll be content.

“We earned an awful lot of respect at Fylde which is something I’m personally really pleased about.

“We had a way of playing and a philosophy of what we want to do and hopefully we can carry that on here.

“What we did manage to do was be successful and that’s the biggest thing and most important thing.

“Hopefully that will be something that will follow us to the north east as well.”