Cambridge must find 'rhythm of winning' - Bonner

Mark Bonner returned to Cambridge after being sacked as Gillingham head coach

Cambridge United director of football Mark Bonner says they need to establish a "rhythm of winning games" following relegation to League Two.

The U's finished 23rd, nine points from safety, despite former head coach Bonner and his successor Neil Harris being brought back to the club mid-season.

Now they are looking to rebuild the squad with a view to push for promotion back to the third tier next term.

"Look at last year, Port Vale came down and went back up, Carlisle came down, went down (again). There's such a randomness to the league," Bonner told BBC Radio Cambridgeshire.

"What we'll try to do is get a real identity about the team, bond a new group of players together quickly, it'll take a bit of time to get going but we have to get into a rhythm of winning games and changing that mentality.

"We're not the underdogs now, we don't want to cling on to that. We have to expect more of ourselves but we have to be quite measured in the way that we do that."

Cambridge have released 11 players who were at the end of their contracts following a season in which they won only nine of their 46 league games.

They have brought in Nick Tyler-Hicks from Harris' former club Millwall as head of recruitment but at a time when many clubs rely on data analysis and building algorithms to identify potential signings, Bonner believes watching a player is still vital to the process.

"Live scouting still exists but it's a dying art really. There's less and less people that do it," he said.

"I understand why - you can watch a lot more games in a day. All that should do is filter the process to make sure you then go and watch the right players."

He added: "If you have people trying to dissect and understand data they don't understand, that's a disaster... We don't want to imitate anyone, we just want to be modern enough and I'd say data is prince not king, it's important but shouldn't dictate everything."

Having previously been head coach at Cambridge and Gillingham, Bonner said he was still coming to terms with the job title 'director of football'.

"The job role is very different but it is strange being referred to as that because traditionally it's probably a title that's reserved for a much older guy than I am," the 39-year-old added.

"I haven't got my flat cap and pipe out yet but it's a new one to get my head around. We've wound the clock back a bit with that because the modern version is 'sporting director' but I often think that maybe confuses people about what it is.

"We've tried to be as basic as possible with the title. It does exactly what it says on the tin."