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Jamie Day faced Ebbsfleet for the first time last Saturday since he was sacked – but claimed it never really felt emotional.
The former Fleet boss, who was sacked in April 2015 after failing to reach the Conference South play-offs, rejoined Welling as first-team coach at the end of last month.
That meant an almost immediate reunion against the Fleet but Day insisted that the occasion felt no different to him.
“If I’m honest, and it might upset some people, I didn’t feel that people really wanted me there anyway” he said.
“I think I was appointed as manager and probably 80 per cent of people there didn’t want me as manager. They wanted a higher-profile one that had dropped out from the League.
“I never really felt that much love for that club, not in a horrible way, but that’s how I felt. It’s not awkward, I don’t find it an issue and I don’t have a problem with anyone at the club. They made their decision and that’s fine.
“I think looking back I said some things about old players that are there that I shouldn’t have said and that was out of frustration, nothing to do with them. But all the boys I have worked with there have all shaken hands and are all fine with me. I don’t have a problem with that or anyone else.”
When asked if Day sticks by his decision to quit Welling in December 2014 after being lured by Ebbsfleet’s ambition, he replied: "It’s a difficult one. At that time Ebbsfleet had a budget that was good enough to get promoted.
“It was a new adventure that I wanted to try and do and have a go at it. The problem was there were issues off the pitch that I couldn’t put right and things happened.
“I look back and it would have been easy to stay at Welling, grind it out and keep trying to stay up every year. It was another challenge that potentially – and Daryl McMahon will have that potentially - was to go into the Football League, it’s just whether you get time to do that.”
As for his current plight at Welling, Day feels that it is not going to be an immediate turnaround to turn the Wings from relegation battlers to promotion chasers.
He said: “One of the reasons I left in the first place was because I didn’t feel the club could go any further. I thought we’d reached where it was.
“If we would have had the investment that there maybe is now then we wouldn’t have been in that situation. But at that time the money and budget was what it was and in a way that probably made the club get promotion because we needed that togetherness and team spirit, but it hasn’t kicked on.
“It finds itself in a position now that I’m not happy with and Welling supporters are not happy with and we’ve got to try and get that right. It’s not going to be easy and it’s not going to happen overnight.
“When I was here before it took three years to get a team that was good enough to compete. That’s not going to change now and it’s about getting the right players in, and players that want to play for the club. It might take 1, 2, 3, or 4 years – I don’t know – but we’ll do our best to get the club back to where we want it to be.”
