Lee Carter: My vow to Bucks fans

The Bucks finished bottom of the Conference Premier in the 2012-13 season after an awful campaign which saw them clock up a dismal 30-match winless run.

Promotion from the Conference North followed just 12 months later and the club had hoped to make a better fist of things in their second stint in the non-league's top tier this season.

That has not materialised, and Carter said: "Of course I am bitterly disappointed that we have let people down again. It is not something that you ever set out to do but we will bounce back.

"I think that what is going to happen going forward though is that maybe the cake will have some different ingredients in it from the point of view of how we go about our business and how we recruit players as well as the time that we take to bring that all to the boil.

"We will be competitive next year, there is no doubt about it, but we want to do it in a slightly different way this time – a more long-term way.

"And I think part of that is driven on by the anger of what I have seen again happen to the football club in a relegation season. It makes you angry, bitterly sad, it tears your heart out almost so that drives you on to try and do things in a better way next time."

Chief among the priorities will be to improve recruitment of players for the next campaign with a newly-appointed scout playing a pivotal role. Recruitment was named as a major factor in the club's previous relegation two seasons ago, and Carter has again been very disappointed with a number of the players brought in for the current campaign.

He said: "We need more thorough recruitment because for the second time in three years I find myself looking back bitterly disappointed with some of the recruitment.

"People see it as a cop-out but I guess those who are standing here will take the flak and blame when ultimately it's perhaps those who aren't here any more that should take the blame for it.

"We want to retain a core of players because there is a core of players here that cares passionately about the club. I bring the Sean Clancy's and the Mike Grogans etc into that. I think there's also a third of the players that we'll bring in from people that have been identified by the manager. And we have got a scout who has been operating for a couple of weeks now and we will be recruiting on the basis of our own scouting work."

Carter is already working on a new football plan, which will go before the board in two weeks' time, to take the club forward again.

He said: "We want to know what our football plan is by then so I am tasked with other directors to bring that plan together.

"We are not going to waste weeks and days,and get to the end of May and not know what we are doing. And we are also not going to spend the summer listening to agents on the other end of the phone recommending players to us."

The club's current fan-ownership model will be up for discussion again with Carter saying: "There will be a couple of announcements about that."

And the club also intends to expand its youth set-up by launching an under-18s scholarship scheme from next season as part of a long-term strategy for improving the playing squad.