Forest Green’s relegation will be “hurting for quiet some time” says head coach Duncan Ferguson.
The Gloucestershire club’s return to League Two next season was confirmed after Saturday’s defeat by Barnsley.
They are the first EFL club to go down this season and are back in the fourth tier after one campaign in League One.
“It still hurts, that you’ve dropped a division. It will probably take a long time for that to ease off,” Ferguson told BBC Radio Gloucestershire.
“In football there’s always another game around the corner to put things right, so it’s back-to-back games very quickly so you move on.
“We’ve got Fleetwood (on Tuesday). You try to forget about it but it will be hurting for quite some time.”
‘Identifying the talent we’re looking for’
Ferguson, who was appointed in January, reiterated that he intended to stay at the club despite their relegation.
While there are still four games of the current campaign to go, the former Everton player said that preparations for next season had already begun ahead of the summer transfer window, fuelled by the appointment of Terry McPhillips in March as the club’s chief scout.
“We’ve started the process because we hired a chief scout three weeks ago so he is ongoing with getting to games and identifying the talent we’re looking for,” Ferguson said.
“We are down the road with that a little bit, but of course the season is still alive for a lot of the club, we’re still playing games, we’ve still got to train the players, we’ve still got to stay focussed we’ve still got to win some games.
“We’ve got to try and keep the players motivated because we’re relegated now.
“We’ve got guys out on loan, we’ve got guys that are out of contract so it can be tough at times to keep everybody pushing in the one direction to try and get results for the club, but that’s my job to do that.
“Obviously the chief scout coming in is a big help to us, it’s late in the season but he can still get out to games.”
