THEY have ambitions of winning the national football title for a fifth time.

Naturally, Harbour View FC, a club that has been one of the most successful in the island over the years, have fairly high targets.

But for the coaching staff there appears to be little pressure ahead of the start of the 2015-16 Red Stripe Premier League season.

“We are not pressuring ourselves,” was how head coach Ludlow Bernard responded to suggestions that the club needs to make a big statement after a disappointing fifth-place finish last season.

“Clearly we are in a professional environment so we expect first and foremost that the objective has to be winning and we’ll certainly do all the preparation to ensure we are winning,” he continued.

Ricardo ‘Bibi’ Gardner and Donald ‘Fowlie’ Stewart, who are all former national players, will provide assistance to Bernard. Fabian Taylor, another ex-national player, has also joined the coaching set-up.

As the head coach spoke to the Jamaica Observer late on Thursday shortly after his team beat Barbican FC 4-0 in a practice game at the Barbican Complex, the stress was on combining a “rebuilding” process with on-field “success”.

Bernard, who is now also coach of Kingston College in the Manning Cup after a successful number of years with rivals Wolmer’s Boys, conceded that getting into the top four at the end of the preliminary rounds is a goal for him and his staff.

“Definitely that has to be target number one, to get into the play-offs. Whether rebuilding or not, Harbour View have been consistent in terms of getting in there, so clearly that has to be the number one priority, and once in there we go for getting into the finals and then win the competition,” he said.

They were some distance off that goal last season. A fifth-place finish was all Harbour View had to hold onto after a substandard campaign.

And little blame could have been thrown in Bernard’s direction for that. He, Gardner and Stewart took over at the back end of the season when much of the damage had already been done.

Then, Harbour View, a club that previously won titles in 1999-2000, 2006-07, 2009-10 and 2012-13, were lying in sixth place. And confidence was palpably low.

Given the pre-season preparation this time around, Bernard expects to see incremental improvement as the season progresses.

“We have had a good, structured preparation. But in terms of the personnel, quite a few of the players came in towards the latter part of the preseason. During the course of the competitive season we will be trying to play catch-up. So far, it’s been organised and we expect that eventually the quality of the preparation will come to the fore,” he told the Observer, while expressing some level of satisfaction with how the team shaped up against Barbican on Wednesday.

Though the squad is relatively young and further boosted by the addition of promising youth players in the former Charlie Smith High pair of Andrew Allen and Odane Samuels, Harbour View also grabbed the services of retired Reggae Boy Ian ‘Pepe’ Goodison and former Tivoli Gardens FC midfield maestro Keammar Daley.

Bernard said those moves and possibly others to follow will bring the desired balance to the squad.

“We figure Harbour View need to rebuild and we have that injection of youthful energy. That’s the course that we are taking now. The injection of a couple senior players is a part of that plan to provide a little stability and leadership in the group. Keammar Daley and Ian Goodison would help us in that regard,” Bernard said.