PAUL Cox has overseen remarkable progress at Barrow AFC since taking charge – now he wants to avoid the curse of the difficult second album.

In his first full year in charge, Cox led the Bluebirds to a seventh-placed finish in the National League last season – the highest position the club have occupied since being kicked out of the Football League in 1972.

That was barely 18 months after he took over a side on the brink of the relegation zone and seeming more likely as contenders for the drop than for the play-offs.

But some wise work in the transfer market – bringing in the likes of Byron Harrison, Moussa Diarra and Richie Bennett – saw Barrow up among the top teams in the division last term.

A 26-match unbeaten run across all competitions – encompassing reaching the third round of the FA Cup and climbing as high as third on two separate occasions – showed how much progress had been made.

And, while the quest for the play-offs was to end in eventual disappointment as the form tailed off towards the end of the campaign, there was general admiration for the big step up taken by the boys from Holker Street.

Since then, Bennett, Jordan Williams and Nick Anderton have all moved on to Football League clubs for substantial – by Barrow standards – fees, while Ross Hannah and Paul Turnbull went to Chester and captain Danny Livesey was released.

There has been a rebuilding effort on the playing side, with the likes of Adi Yussuf, Thierry Audel, David Fitzpatrick and Asa Hall arriving as Cox looks for the right formula once more.

But the experienced non-league manager knows other teams will have smartened up about Barrow's potential, will know they cannot so easily be discounted, and Cox recognises the biggest challenge facing his team is to keep up the high standards they have set.

“If you look at the situation – and I have thought about this quite a lot of late – what we have done over just shy of two years has been nothing short of remarkable on the pitch,” said Cox, who assumed command of the team in November 2015, when defeat to Woking – a game they won 2-1 – would have sent them into the bottom-four.

“Going back to my first couple of games, the perception of us was that no-one took us seriously. Now, I think the next stage of the club's development is that people take us seriously, people look at us – not just supporters, but players, managers, agents from all over the football world – this year as being a team that is going to challenge.

“The next stage of our development is to have an understanding of that and what is needed to achieve that. That can sometimes be the hardest battle.

“It's like with players. You can get players who come in for the first year and they are absolute dynamite. Then people get to grips with them or, for whatever reason, they take their foot off the pedal. It's second-season syndrome, and we have to make sure that we're working harder and that we're doing everything better than last season.

“The league has got stronger – it's not about what you spend as a football club, how good your players are, if your competitors are improving and growing all the time, sometimes you just have to keep up with the Joneses and make sure you're in front of them.

“This league is becoming that competitive now that you can have a good squad, you can have good resources, you can have a good fan-base, and as you saw last year with York, you still get relegated.

“I think it is going to be a really tough season in front of us. We've got to meet every challenge and we've got to make sure that we cover everything, all the one per cents. It's the one per cents that will make us successful.

“As I have always said, I want to take this club forward. That's my goal, that's my ambition, to keep taking this club forward. I don't want to stand still.”

Barrow start out at Dagenham in their opening fixture against a side Cox has tipped as favourites for promotion.

They face the likes of AFC Fylde, Dover Athletic and Tranmere Rovers within the first five weeks of the campaign – all teams who will be eyeing the upper-reaches as well – and Cox feels that is indicative of a division where it is impossible to predict who will finish where.

“This isn't just paper-talk, I genuinely believe this will be the hardest I have seen this league from top to bottom,” said a man who won the league with Mansfield Town in 2013.

“You go back three or four years, I think you could really pick the top six or seven and the bottom five or six.

“This year, of the teams that have come up, Ebbsfleet and Fylde have the resources to probably go and win it. Then you have Halifax and Maidenhead, who have two very good managers. You have four teams coming into the fold who, if I was a betting man, I would bet would not be in the bottom four this year.

“Added to that are the bigger clubs, the Wrexhams of this world, the Dagenhams, the ex-Football League clubs. They have all flexed their muscles and really been pro-active and resourceful in the transfer market. They have signed some very good players. Even the teams who didn't do so well last year, the likes of Chester, have signed some very good players.

“As a betting man, it would be very hard to predict promotion and relegation. What could happen this season is that you could be sixth-from-bottom but still have a chance of the play-offs in the last couple of months. That how tight I see it.

“I think the clubs with the greater resources and the greater quality in depth will come good. They will be the ones you are looking at.”