Mark Bonner, the director of football at Cambridge United, says head coach Neil Harris’ “relentless” push to get better is a big reason behind their promotion chase.
The U’s are still holding onto a top-three spot in League Two after their 0-0 draw with Walsall on Tuesday, as they aim to get back into the third tier following last season’s drop down.
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“The reason he’s had the career he’s had, and the impact he’s had here, is because he’s relentless in his drive, he’s not going to let up,” Bonner told the BBC 72+ EFL podcast.
“I absolutely love that, and the honesty makes someone so easy to work with. We’re quite open and speak to each other any way we want.”
Cambridge last earned promotion from League Two in 2021 when Bonner was managing, but he was let go two years later before returning just over a year ago in his current role.
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About his relationship with Harris, he said: “We challenge each other.
“I heard David Moyes say once that when you’re a manager, there’s enough people that want to disagree with you and challenge everything you do, sometimes you need some support and help to work out what’s going on in your mind.
“It’s trying to find the balance between the two things. I support him every way that I can but I certainly offer an opinion and we’re not afraid to disagree with each other.
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“The fact that we can do that with complete trust and move on quite quickly makes it a really healthy relationship.”
A big part of Cambridge’s good run this season has been their solid defense – they’ve only let in 28 goals over 37 league matches, which is nine fewer than anyone else near the top.
“We’ve built a good side and put ourselves in a good position. You see how difficult it is sometimes for teams that suffer relegation to have success the next season – if you’d said we’d have 59 points with nine games to play, we’d definitely have taken that,” said Bonner.
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“Every successful team has usually got that [defensive stability] to fall back on. If you look over the year our goalscoring rate and possession rates have increased and improved but there’s no doubt we started fairly pragmatic.
“We were attempting to be Port Vale and bounce back straight away, but desperate not to be Carlisle [relegated to the National League].”
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