Last week brought the good news that seven of United’s players had activated clauses which will keep them at Brunton Park for another season.
Speaking about the group on Saturday, Chris Beech said: “I’ll talk more about the contract extensions when it isn’t directly after a game, but all of the lads have been great.
“I think some of them would really excel with a great crowd behind them, we’ve got a great crowd who unfortunately can’t share things with us. It’s been a long season, the lads haven’t had a lot of time off, even though we had a long period without playing, because we were always preparing to play.
“Sometimes you need that roar from the fans to bring that little bit extra out of you. I always played much better in bigger games with the fans right behind me, we haven’t been able to have that, but hopefully they’ll be back next season.”
“These are all great lads, and I’m obviously really pleased,” he added. “There’s a lot of players’ contracts are out and open, a lot with options, the hard work with them was last season and they’ve been activated.
“They’ve done very well. I don’t want to go on too much about it, but I want to see 99 per cent of us together again. Players are always playing for contracts and their futures, and it has so much outside influence from agents and different situations.
“But what we do is we have been a brilliant membership of remaining a team and I want us to remain a team until we finish. At that point difference will happen, but you can look at Cheltenham and they’ve been around this block a few times now, to be progressive each season to get themselves in this position they’re in now.
“That’s brilliant to them and we’ve got to learn off them, but we’re playing them on Tuesday and we’ve got to try and beat them.”
