Sam Merson knows that this is big season for both him and St Albans City – and he has aspirations of furthering his career and reaching the football league.

City began the new season with a pre-season friendly at home to Peterborough United.

And although it ended in a 4-1 defeat, Merson caught the eye in the second-half with a typical all-action display.

He has had interest from higher-up previously, QPR being one of the clubs who have taken a look, and it is spurring him on.

He said: “The first thing is obviously to help the team. Hopefully we get another promotion push and stay up there but if I keep doing that and keep doing well, hopefully I can push on up through the leagues.

“That’s the career path and hopefully it pans out this year.”

Ian Allinson agrees that this is a big year for him with the St Albans manager looking for him to add consistency to his arsenal.

Allinson said: “He just lost his way in the second half of last season, he lost his spring.

“But we saw [against Peterborough] that he’s got his spring back. In training he’s looked really sharp.

“It’s going to be a big season for him. We’ve got to make sure we continue to get him the goals he got last season.

“I think he ended up with 14 or 15 last year. If he plays regularly, can we get 20 goals out of him?

“But he’s got to be consistent. We can’t have a Sam Merson who plays well one week and doesn’t the week after.

“We’ve got to have someone who performs week-in, week-out because when he does he’s a handful. He scores great goals.

“He combined really well with Flo [Bojaj] but he just snatched at a couple of chances where last year he would lash them into the net.”

For the time being though Merson is focused on Saints and the 22-year-old believes the club are in good shape going into the new campaign.

“I know we have only had the one game so far but the lads that have come in have looked sharp in training,” he said.

“There’s not much difference to last year but we do have bundles of pace.

“And if we start like we did last year we’ll know what to do having been in that position before.

“We know you’ve got to keep grinding out results and stick together.”