HARTLEPOOL United boss Chris Turner's sights are set on next season - and getting off to a flyer.

Last Friday's defeat to Macclesfield all but ended Pool's play-off hopes and now Turner is focusing on August.

Turner's season was hindered by a poor start, which left Pool bottom of the table when they lost to Plymouth on November 3.

Since then, a storming run gave Pool an excellent chance of reaching the play-offs, but after playing catch-up for too long, the task has proved too much.

Pool suffered a slow start in each of the last three seasons and their poor early season form has left Turner baffled.

Now he is aiming towards a flying start next season.

"People will look at the last few weeks at home and say that is where we lost the chance of getting in the play-offs - but it's not like that,'' he insisted.

"We got ourselves into a chance of getting there over the last four months, but what cost us the chance is the opening we had to the season.

"We've gained 20-odd points on some clubs in the division because some teams were a lot of points ahead of us when we were bottom of the league and now we are 13 or so points ahead of them.

"Just as we were getting towards the finishing line we have let ourselves down.

"That's the turnaround we have had this season. We will start looking towards next season and try and find out how we can have a good start - or even how we can get an average start.

"Because the difference this season has been the start. We had a poor start, if we had even an average start then we would still be in the hunt.''

Pool have visited Norway for the last two years, utilising the close links between the club and crack Norwegian outfit Brann Bergen, but slow starts to the season have hindered Pool's progress.

This year, however, Pool could be on their travels elsewhere, with chairman Ken Hodcroft earlier admitting that even Brazil and America could be on Pool's pre-season agenda this summer.

"We will be announcing what we are doing pre-season in due course,'' said Turner.

"But I would have thought we will be going somewhere different.

"The difficulty for a club like ours is that nobody wants to come to our place to play, last year the difficulty was that we didn't have a pitch at home.

"The three North-East Premiership teams will be invited to play here and hopefully we will get some games here.''

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