New Berwick Rangers manager Kevin Haynes warns players of hard work ahead to restore club’s fortunes

​The former Rangers striker and assistant manager has taken over a club fourth from bottom of the standings, on 21 points from as many fixtures, only seven clear of the relegation spot currently occupied by Cumbernauld Colts.

Berwick haven’t finished lower than the 13th place they ended up in last year, two places higher than they are at the moment, since arriving in the fifth-tier league in 2019 and Haynes wants that to remain their low water mark, confident that they’ve got what it takes to aim for a fourth top-ten place in five seasons.

The 43-year-old, previously gaffer at the East of Scotland Football League premier division’s Dunbar United, was given an extra week to prepare for his first game in charge – away to fifth-placed Linlithgow Rose on Saturday, January 25 – by the weekend’s scheduled home fixture against Tranent Juniors being postponed due to Shielfield Park’s pitch being frozen and he intends to make the most of it.

“It’s a club I’ve got a strong affiliation with, having been here twice before, as a player and assiistant manager, so I’m really proud to have been appointed manager by the current board of directors,” he told the club’s Facebook page.

“There aren’t many clubs I would have left Dunbar for.

“The opportunity to step up a league and with an old club pulled on the heartstrings a bit.”

Looking ahead, Haynes said: “The short-term goal is progression.

“There’s nothing weird and wonderful. It’s can we catch teams above us, can we progress as a team, can we progress as a club? We’ve got to try to drive the whole place forward.”

Striker Liam Buchanan has joined Haynes’s coaching staff, though he’ll continue playing too, and they and the rest of the club’s coaches are warning their future match-day squads that hard work will be required to deliver the brand of football they want to see.

“I want us to be in control of the ball more often – I want us to pass the ball – but with that stuff, you need to work hard,” said Haynes.

“You need to be able to create space, you need to run and you need to have energy to win the ball back, and that’s what we will be.”

The new gaffer is calling on Berwick fans to bear with him as he sets about rebuilding his squad, warning them not to expect overnight success.

“We might not get a true version of what we want to be short-term,” he said. “There might be short-term pain, hopefully not, but it’s that progression.

“The fans have got to let us progress, got to let us build a team, build a squad, and aim to be where we want to be.”

Haynes is grateful for the extra week’s preparation granted by Saturday gone’s call-off, saying: “It gives me more time to work with the players and this week we’ve got no fixture as well.

“We’ve got a good couple of weeks to try to implement what we want to do.

“I’ll get to know the players, they’ll get to know me, and hopefully that’ll get us in a better place to give it a right go against Linlithgow Rose.

“It’s about trying to implement changes quickly, hoping that players buy into those changes, and, as I say, it’s just about that progression.”

His squad is boosted by on-loan Hibernian left-back Owen Calder agreeing to extend his stay at Berwick until the end of the current season and attacking midfielder Kyle Somers joining from Dunbar for an undisclosed fee, with striker Sulaiman Ashraf heading in the other direction and departing after 15 appearances.

Making up the rest of Haynes’s coaching team are Gary Small, Andrew Donlevy and Ross Merrilees.