AS Darlington prepare for the final weeks of the season, Dave Penney is resigned to his first failure as a manager, though he can point to a hugely significant mitigating factor.

Darlington are 12th and Penney admits his team has little to play for during the last five games.

But he believes supporters will understand the reasons why. The effects of administration have been enormously damaging to the club’s promotion bid which suffered its latest blow on Tuesday.

That was a 2-1 home defeat to Wycombe; so now Penney is still left aiming to better the 11th place achieved during his first Quakers campaign.

That came in 2006/07 after taking charge midway through the season, while in his full seasons as a manager – at Doncaster and Darlington – Penney has enjoyed success.

He said: “The disappointing thing from a personal point of view is that this is going to be the only full season I’ve had when there’s been nothing riding on the last game.

“When I took over at Doncaster it was around October and we finished in the playoffs.

“The reason I came here was that there was a decent budget and we could’ve got a promotion. But the figures I’ve heard people bandying about this season about budgets are rubbish.

“This club has nowhere near the top budget in the league. It got cut by 50 per cent last summer.

“So I think that makes what we’ve done this year a better achievement than last season when we were sixth.

“If we still had the ten points we’d be seventh now, but we’d have won automatic promotion because administration has a much bigger impact apart from the ten points.

“Obviously that’s only my opinion, but people aren’t daft, supporters can see what’s happened to us.”

Tomorrow Darlington are at Chesterfield and on Monday at home to Bury, both promotion-chasing teams.

Over the last five games Penney intends to give some of the youth team players that have featured of late another chance to impress.

Left-winger Josh Gray, who Penney would like to keep beyond the end of his apprenticeship which expires at the end of the season, and Curtis Main are among those likely to feature.

“We’ll have a look at see if we can change things around between games,” said Penney.

“We might have a look at the youngsters, the likes of Curtis and Josh and a couple of others too.

“But we’ve got to be respectful to other teams in the division, the rivals of the teams we are playing. We can’t played a weakened side and end up giving a team an advantage.”

Also in the squad tomorrow will be Dan Riley, Dan Groves and Corey Barnes.