The new look Oakwell taskforce - complete with four summer signings - assembled this morning for the first time.

Expectation on team is 'year on year improvement'. Day one was not ideal with Davey confined to a hospital bed, the result of a painful neck condition.

Nevertheless targets have been set.

Owner Patrick Cryne has marked Davey's card, a spot in the top half of the table is the 2008-09 requirement.

"If we push to be in the top half, which we were for most of the early part of the season, then that would be a good achievement," Cryne stated.

Davey is confident he can deliver in only his second full season in charge.

"We look back and last season and we ended up getting to an FA Cup semi final and beating our points tally in the league from the year before," he stressed before he was taken into hospital. "There's no doubt in all our minds that if we'd not go through the FA Cup stages we'd have been further up that table."

Barnsley finished 18th in the Championship with 55 points; the 2006-7 season brought 20th place with 50 points.

Davey is likely to require a better run of luck than he received last time around. "I look back over the season and there are not many periods on the calendar when we had bad spells. When we had a bad spell in the league we did well in the cup. We were consistent throughout really. Obviously we would like to have been further up the table and that's our aim obviously this season," he explained.

"We were fourth at one stage and then we ended losing Jon Macken, Lewin Nyatanga, Domink Werling, Heinz Muller and Anderson de Silva and all at about the same time. They were five or six starters who were not only starting but excelling in the team. We lost them at a crucial stage."

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