Margate assistant manager Matt Longhurst feels the transfer market is more challenging than ever as players seek “crazy” money.

Gate continue to be frustrated in their long-running search for experience at both ends of the pitch.

They’ve been after a centre-half and a centre-forward all season, missing out on targets to rivals with bigger budgets.

Longhurst has no problem with that and says it’s down to him and manager Jamie Coyle to grow the club to a point where they generate more money to spend on players.

“Having those two players would make such a difference,” said Longhurst after Gate dropped to eighth in Isthmian South East after a “toothless” 2-0 defeat at Ashford on Saturday.

“It’s just a case of staying in the race while we’re looking for them. That’s the key.

“We’ve had irons in the fire but this year, financially, is the hardest year we’ve ever known in non-league. It’s crazy, some of the figures that are flying around.

“Sometimes it’s about not being able to compete with that finance and then sometimes it’s about getting what you’re paying for and not paying over the odds.

“It’s a fine balancing act in terms of making a decision on the right player because we’ve had, not a high turnover, but there is a turnover of players at the moment where one or two signings haven’t quite worked.

“That’s sometimes determined by the bucket you’re buying from and sometimes you’ve got to take a risk on some players to see if it works because some of these boys that are probably going to guarantee you success are not reachable financially.”

Margate’s history shows the fans are out there and the management want to get them back through the door and attract new supporters to Hartsdown Park.

Longhurst can point to his work at former clubs Ramsgate, now averaging over a thousand in the Isthmian Premier, and Whitstable, where gates increased significantly amid FA Vase glory at Wembley and a Southern Counties East Premier Division title triumph.

The community aspect comes into play, too, with Longhurst and Coyle taking their responsibilities off the pitch seriously.

“If you look at Whitstable, we built the club. If you look at Ramsgate, I helped start off building the club,” said Longhurst, with Gate hosting Broadbridge Heath this Saturday (3pm).

“If you use Whitstable, Chatham and Ramsgate as examples, they’ve organically built a whole new fanbase and they’ve then built the club off the back of the fanbase.

“With the numbers coming through the doors, it allows you to spend more money.

“Add the ability to work within the community and the youth section connection to that, and that’s why these teams have got success and why they’ve got the finances they have.

“Ultimately, Margate has got a similar community to Ramsgate. It’s got that local feel that we can build but it will take time. We’re only getting 350-400 fans.

“That’s not going to allow you to go and sign a centre-forward from Step 3, so we’ve got to do the building underneath as well as try and win games.

“We knew the size of the club in terms of where it can go and what we can do with it when we took the job.

“There’s no ceiling here but there’s a lot of work to be done to get it where we need it to be.

“That will take time, which will then give us strings to our bow to be able to bring in better players because at the moment we’re struggling to compete with certain teams.

“I’ve no issue with that because there are teams at every level that have more money than others. That’s the game. I would never moan about that.

“We were a team last year at Whitstable that were stronger financially backed than most in the league below and that helped us get out of it, so there’s no hiding from that.

“It’s the same at every level. If you’ve got more money, you’ve got better players, you win more games.

“There’s some big things going on at Margate behind the scenes and if they come to fruition, we’re going to be one of the clubs where people are going to want to be.

“We’ve just got to be patient while that takes care of itself and we keep doing some building underneath.

“The short term will be harder than the long term.

“All the things we’ve done previously, we’ve got to do here.

“We’re not shying away from that, we know that, we know what it looks like and how you do it. It just takes time.

“There’s no excuses, we’ve got a strong enough squad to compete in this division.

“I’m quite confident we’ll end up where we want to be in the table come the end of the season but we won’t have just grown the first team, there’ll be improvement right the way across the club with our input.”

The star of the show for Margate in their defeat at Ashford was kitman Frankie Empson.

A qualified official, he stepped in to run the line after the referee suffered an early injury.

Empson’s intervention saved the game from being abandoned.

“The referee went down injured after a few minutes and it got put out that they needed somebody,” said Longhurst.

“We said to Frankie, ‘you might have to jump in here’, and he did.

“He did a great job. Hats off to him. He was ultra professional.

“I think Ashford were a bit concerned that one of our people was doing it but he showed great integrity and fair play to him. He gave a couple of decisions against us as well, which was the right thing to do.”