Southend driven to 'attack next season' - Rees

Justin Rees (front, centre) was the co-founder of Sydney-based company Eighty20 Solutions

Southend United chairman Justin Rees says the club will target automatic promotion next season after losing to Oldham Athletic in the 2024-25 National League play-off final at Wembley.

The Shrimpers secured the last play-off spot on the final day of the campaign and then won away at Rochdale and Forest Green Rovers to reach the final.

They twice took the lead at the national stadium as they attempted to regain English Football League status, but Oldham eventually won 3-2.

"I woke up the next day really, really driven, it's only nine weeks to next season. That should tell us that if you want to play in big games, cup games, play-off games, the more of them you play, unfortunately you are going to taste agony sometimes," Rees told BBC Essex's Breakfast Show.

"We want to be back in that EFL. We should all be driven by this disappointment to attack next season and be chasing the top honours rather than jumping in there [the play-offs] on the final day."

Australian businessman Rees led the COSU consortium (Custodians of Southend United) which took over the club from former owner Ron Martin last summer following years of financial problems which had threatened the club's existence.

And he is happy to let the players and supporters be the focus of attention at the club, saying: "As owners our job is to steer the club into safer waters, (and) ideally be more in the background than the foreground."

A report published last month revealed that "intercompany loans totalling £19.4m were written off" as part of the takeover process and that the club made a £2.65m pre-tax loss in the 12 months ending July 2024.

But plans to upgrade parts of their Roots Hall stadium are ongoing and attention will now turn to providing a squad for boss Kevin Maher and his staff to ensure they hit the ground running in the new season.

"We're all deflated but not devastated," said chief executive Tom Lawrence.

"If you'd said to me 12 months ago, would you take ending up at Wembley and just losing out in a play-off final - if you roll back 18 months we were a heartbeat away from going out of existence, so in the context of everything that's gone on, what the players, Kevin and the management team have achieved is just incredible.

"We'll be back in the office tomorrow to go again and start building for next season. We just need to grow and become stronger."