Cray Wanderers boss Neil Smith has admitted keeping the club up this season is his biggest challenge in management.

Former Welling and Bromley manager Smith has his work cut out as the club start life in their impressive new home at Flamingo Park.

They’ve just equalled their best-ever FA Cup run but the focus now turns to putting league points on the board.

“I’ve been there before in terms of challenges and this is the biggest I’ve ever had,” revealed Smith, whose side sit bottom of Isthmian Premier, albeit with games in hand.

“I was in Conference South when I went to Bromley and then in the Conference National with the funding. Here, you’ve got four guys and they’re putting their own money in. You get the pitch and now we’ve got to make sure we earn money from it to pay for it.

“Early on in the season, if I’m going to be brutally honest, we weren’t good enough but now we’re getting better. We’re acquiring a squad that is capable of putting a run of results together.

“The teams around us lost on Saturday and although we’re two games behind some of them, we’ve just got to win the next one and go from there.

“I’d be more worried if we were bottom of the league and had played 37. We’ve only played seven games and have still got 39 games to go.

“We’ll give it a good shift and it means if I’ve got to change the squad around then I’ve got enough time to change it around. We played one league game in September and now we’ve got all these games to fill in, it can work for you or against you.”

Cray start a run of three home games when they host Chatham on Tuesday night.

Smith is operating with a limited budget as resources are diverted into the club’s new Flamingo Park ground rather than the playing budget.

“We’ve got a run of three home games but I’ve only got a squad of 16,” explained Smith.

“If someone gets injured then it’s either a kid or someone who has come in for one day of training. That’s where we are as a club and once that starts improving then we’ll get better.

“I have to work within my constraints. They’ve got to pay for this, the ground was the priority. It was always about consolidation this year and trying to stay up.

“We’ve got a new pitch and everyone thinks that a new pitch means more money but it doesn’t. It means someone’s got to pay for it and the guys that have put their own money in need that reimbursement.

“Over time, if we’re averaging 1,200 then great but we don’t know what the league is going to generate now. We’ve had these cup games and had some really good gates but now we’ve got to make sure they come back and support Cray every week.

“It’s not just the first team, the women and all the youth teams we’ve got. They were scattered around playing games but we’ve got a hub now and we want every under-15 and under-16 player the chance to play on that pitch.

“This is their club, we want them to watch the first team and one day they might be playing in the first team. There’ll be some new Cray supporters that might think they want to come back.”

Smith can see parallels from his time at Bromley, when he helped the club gain promotion to the top flight of non-league football.

While Cray spent two decades sharing at Hayes Lane, they now need time to establish a fanbase back in the area which they would historically call ‘home’.

“I was at Bromley and lost my job through (no fault of my own), it’s not like we were bottom of the league or stuff like that, I had a year out and cleared my head,” reflected Smith.

“I came into the division here and didn’t really know it if I’m going to be brutally honest and it’s tough, as sometimes you can’t compete against budgets that are in this division, however hard the guys try.

“It’s ridiculous some of the money (in this league), some of them earn more than what I had at Bromley when I first walked in there. We know it’s a tough ask, all I ask is for the players to stick together and give me everything they’ve got.

“This is a long-term. When I walked into Bromley, they were averaging 250 and Cray were sharing there and getting bigger crowds. By the time I left, Bromley were averaging 2,500, had a trip to Wembley and got promoted into the Conference.

“We had to generate a bit of momentum and hopefully this is what this cup game can do for Cray, get the local supporters and businesses involved and see if we can create something. We’re starting from a very low base because we’ve never had a home ground.”

Smith took his team’s failure to reach the first round of the FA Cup personally.

Not because he missed out, but Smith wanted to reward long-serving chairman Gary Hillmann, the main man behind Wanderers’ move to a new ground.

“It's the first time we’ve played at home at this stage but I wanted to get to the first round,” said Smith.

“Not for me, not for a personal reason, but for the chairman. Gary has been here for 30 years and I was desperate to do it for him. I say Gary but obviously, there’s Michael Paye, David Francis and Jason Miller as well.

“But Gary brought me here and I wanted to give him something to say thank you, even if we were just in the draw with a replay, he would have had that privilege to see who we pulled out. But it wasn’t to be and we go again in the league now.”