Stop feeling sorry for ourselves and fight for our lives.
That's the message from Darren Sarll as he takes the reins as Yeovil Town manager.
Giving his first interview since signing a three-year contract at Huish Park, the 36-year-old said there is no room for superiority complexes as The Glovers prepare for life in non league. The club has to accept its fate and deal with it urgently.
"Ive always thought this was a really smashing club, a really big club," he told Yeovil Town TV. "I'm very proud and honoured to be chosen to lead it in its next journey.
"All I can ever be is myself - honest and up front and work with integrity. No good comes from moping around, it never does.
"The only way we can deliver some good, some positivity, some wins - it would be nice to have a winning season - is if we pull ourselves up and we go.
"It's a real team effort, that. It doesn't just end with the manager or group of players. It's all of us - the boardroom down to the tea ladies, laundry, groundsman.
"Everyone needs to make sure they understand: 1. This is the situation we're, in so let's accept it. 2. Let's fight for dear life to get ourselves out of it.
"The quicker we can accept the current situation, the quicker we can accept where we are, the quicker we can get ourselves back up, get our head up and be proud of our football club, the quicker we'll be back in the EFL."
Sarll said the players should expect complete honesty from him and he expects the same back.
He added: "If any of them are feeling: 'I'm not a National League player', they need to shake themselves out of that delusional state right now.
"This is where we are. This is what we've got to do and achieve so we can call ourselves football league managers, coaches, players, physios, recruitment team, press officers.
"It's so important they come with that sort of outlook in life. There's only one way we can remedy this situation and that's really going at it as hard and long as we can in terms of fighting for this football club.
"This league is a completely different challenge. It's very, very demanding and very intense, but it also has that wholesome integrity to it.
"This next year will really sort the men out from the boys. The players have to understand that now. The supporters have to understand that now."
With a little over six weeks until the start of the National League, time really is of the essence for the former Stevenage manager and Head of Academy at Watford.
There are only 13 players on the books for the first-team squad and no senior backroom staff other than Sarll contracted.
"Monday can't come quick enough," he added. "Obviously, you do a lot of your recruitment in this time and a lot of the due diligence on the people you want to bring to your football club, the reasons why they can come and how they can get here.
"We're going to have to fastrack that and make some big decisions - some key decisions. Not quickly, not naively, but correctly.
"I still think there will be a period of time before we can start unveiling new players and making good decisions.
"We've got to work within tight financial constraints. I'm well aware of that. That will never be used as an excuse.
"Building a football team is pretty simple in the nuts and bolts of it. You've got to make really good decisions around players and people.
"If you make more good decisions than bad you normally end up with a successful team."
It's been a sorry six years for the club and its supporters. From the high of being in the Championship, there have been three relegations and the vast majority of results have been defeats.
Home crowds have shrunk - some fans have left as a protest at the owners and ex-manager Darren Way - and a funk has hung around Huish Park for a while. Sarll is determined to eradicate that.
He added: "We need a massive mentality shift and we don't just need a mentality shift in the changing room, we need a mentality shift in the boardroom and the stands.
"There's only one way to get out of this situation and that's to roll our sleeves up - together ideally - and fight for dear life, and carry on fighting until we get this football club where we'd like it to be.
"We'd all love it to be back in the Football League, but we have to understand the nature of what I and the potential new owners are inheriting.
"We're inheriting a team which has lost largely for the last two or three years. To swing that mentality into a winning mentality is going to need a real injection of personality, courage, determination."
Majority shareholders Norman Hayward and John Fry have agreed the sale of the club to a thus-far anonymous consortium, subject to National League ratification.
