Chris Kinnear has targeted a tilt at the Blue Square Bet South title next season after Dover Athletic’s heartbreaking play-off final defeat at Salisbury.

Whites showed great character to send Sunday's game into extra-time, but eventually lost 3-2 at the end of extra time, which left them facing another year in Blue Square Bet South while City progress to Conference National.

Kinnear – who was targeting a third career promotion to the top flight of non-league football – admitted: “It was a disappointed journey home but there were no complaints or recriminations.

“We have to accept it, we’ll get on with it, try to put it behind us and move on.
“We nearly did it, but it’s not the end, we are building a club here. This is how you do it.
“It’s not just one season of success, you need to repeat it over two or three seasons.To finish third was no mean feat, in a division with a lot of full-time teams.

“We have got to move on and learn from the experience and learn about the players."

Kinnear immediately turned his attention to next season and the aim of winning promotion without the need for a play-off campaign.

He said: “We’ll tinker with the squad in the summer but we’ll not do anything major.
“We have not discussed a budget yet as we didn’t know what league we would be playing in, but we’ll sit down and talk about what we’re going to do.

“We’ll certainly try to win the league – you should be doing that at the start of every season, otherwise what’s the point? We’ll try to win the league and if we ended up in the play-offs again then so be it.”