WALES international Mark Jones has been training with Rochdale this week ahead of today’s curtain-raiser at Blundell Park.

Jones caught the eye of several clubs last season, despite playing in a struggling Wrexham side, and was lined up for a move to newly promoted Peterborough. However, that deal has not gone through and Jones spent Thursday and Friday with the Dale squad with both parties taking a closer look at one another.

Described as a ‘highly talented player’ by Dale manager Keith Hill, Jones will not come into contention for this afternoon’s opening game of the season against Grimsby Town.

Hill’s squad travel to Cleethorpes in fine shape and hungry to get the campaign under way.

The Spotland chief is confident his side can push for promotion, but feels a measure of realism is called for when considering opponents with the financial clout of Shrewsbury and Chesterfield.

"It’s got to be about optimism with realism," he said.

"I’m optimistic and confident in everything we are trying to do, but you don’t always get what you deserve. We haven’t got a divine right to be sitting in the top three come the end of the season – we have to earn the right to be wherever we are.

"We had an excellent season last year and people are talking in the press about us having to perform another miracle and there is a lot of speculation suggesting we are going to fail this season and finish up between 15 and 18th. I was angry with that at first, but now I have realised that what we did was perform miracles.

"For the first time this week, we had nowhere to train and that was a real concern. I’m not going to moan about it, but it was a real concern that for the first time in 18 months we had run out of people to call on for a training facility. Luckily, we got one at the last minute, but we have to understand where we are and what we are. We are a continuing work in progress. We have a big plan, from the football perspective, but it is difficult to live your life day to day in this industry."

Hill feels the weight of expectancy proved a heavy burden at the start of last season and is loath to heap such a load on his squad this time round.

"We were a bit naive in our appraisal of the promotion-runners in the early part of last season," he said. "Me and Dave Flitcroft have learned a lot, we’ve evaluated and assessed and I feel we were a bit too gung-ho in our appraisal of our own team and our ability to get the best out of the team.

"It did work out well but we should never have been anywhere near a contender for automatic promotion, let alone the play offs, because last season the budgets of other clubs in the division were far in excess of our own. I’m not too sure we painted a realistic picture to everybody – we were just promoting this positivity and feelgood factor. It didn’t transpire in the early part of the season and we gave ourselves a massive wall to climb. We climbed it ultimately because we are dedicated and we’re workaholics.

"This season, we won’t hide, we’ll stand out there with our shoulders back trying to achieve what we want to achieve.

"I want to be a Premier League manager. People may laugh at that, but I want to manage in the Premier League. So does Dave. If we can, we want to do it together, but if we can’t, we both have our individual agendas. So too have the players, but we can only achieve these ambitions by being collectively successful."

That drive for success starts again today at Grimsby before Dale’s first home game of the season on Tuesday – the Carling Cup first round clash against Oldham (kick off 7.45pm).

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