New head coach Paul Sheerin wants to awaken the sleeping giant that is Falkirk Football Club

The former Aberdeen coach spoke to the press for the first time on Wednesday, after his appointment was officially confirmed last Friday, and said he felt that chance to join the club was too big an opportunity to turn down.

He said that, despite a change in management at Pittodrie last year, he was not forced out of the Dons and had always harboured ambitions of returning to a head coach’s position for the first time since 2014.

"Steven (Glass) and Alan (Russell) never intimated they wanted me away from Aberdeen,” explained Sheerin.

"I always had the ambition to manage again and when the Falkirk job became available it was too big an opportunity for me not to have a look at.

"That’s exactly what I did and now that I’m here I’m hoping I can make a success of it.

"Coming in to the club you recognise the size and potential of it, we all know that we should be pushing to be promoted from this league and I will strive to do that and build a squad capable of that.

"It’s an incredible club, I’ve obviously been here before in terms of managing teams at developmental level but when you go right in to the route of the club you can see the potential it has.

"I’m the first appointment of this board and they knew it was important to get that right so hopefully they will be proven right in time.

"You can tell this club is huge, it’s a sleeping giant and hopefully we can awaken it and push upwards.”

Sheerin’s last spell in charge at a club was with Arbroath from 2010 to 2014 before joining Aberdeen as head coach of the developmental side.

He enjoyed his time in the Granite City but was always keeping an eye out for the chance to get back in the hot seat at the right club.

"I’ve had ambitions before (to get back in to management) and there’s been jobs that have become available that I’ve had a look at but I wasn’t throwing my hat in the ring for ever job, I've been pretty selective.

"I’ve been fortunate enough to work with Derek (McInnes) and Tony (Docherty) for many years, arguably two of the best coaches in the game, so that wealth of experience will be invaluable for me going forward.”

Now, his focus turns to building a squad that can lift the club out of the third tier after two failed attempts.

Sheerin was surprised to see the Bairns not at least in the promotion mix come the end of last season but says the players left over from the last campaign need to use that disappointment as a driving factor going forward.

"Speaking to the players that were her last year, they have to use that hurt to drive them.

"It’s important they use that as much as they can to turn it around next season.

"With the greatest respect to the other teams in this league, who will have the same aims to fight to go up, we definitely have to be in the mix for promotion, there’s no getting away from that.”

Sheerin now has to set his sights on transfer targets, something the club already got a head start on before his appointment was made official.

It will be about recruiting the right character of player, something the new head coach said was discussed during his interview process.

"The process to bring me in as head coach took a little longer, there were different reasons for that, but I was speaking to Gary (Holt) while that situation was going on.

"The club obviously had to move to offer pre-contracts or they would have been left behind.

"The club couldn't leave it till they appointed a head coach because it would have been too late and they could have missed out on targets.

“At the interview stage we spoke about player profiling and how they are changing the process around the recruitment infrastructure.

"The player profile suits the way I want to play so it fell in to place, Gary is a big part of that and now that I’m in I will play a big part in it as well along with Liam (Corr) the analyst so between the three of us we will look to get the right players in to the club.

“There will be more announcements in the coming days as we keep working hard to bring in the right kind of players.”