New Grantham Town manager Nathan Arnold takes charge of his first side for the first time at Shepshed Dynamo

A new era of management gets underway for Grantham Town on New Year's Day when Nathan Arnold takes charge of the Gingerbreads for the first time.

The former Lincoln City and Grimsby Town player was appointed as the new boss of the Northern Premier League Midlands Division club earlier this month.

His first official match at the helm will be the trip to Shepshed Dynamo tomorrow (Wednesday) with the 37-year-old facing a tough task ahead.

He takes over a Grantham side who are bottom of the table and 11 points adrift of safety with just two league wins from 22 outings this term.

Arnold replaces Paul Rawden who has been in temporary charge following the departure of Louis Bland with the Grantham chairman admitting that the new boss faces a stern challenge.

Rawden said: "Luckily for us, we've got a fresh approach coming in and hopefully Nathan and his team can get us a much better 2025.

"There is a lot of hard work ahead. We've still got 18 games left but we do need to probably win 10 or 11 of those.

"It's not going to be easy but hopefully we can have a bit more quality in the approach to some of the games which we've got coming up.

"We will always have hope and, with new people coming in, they usually bring new ideas and the players then have a response to that.

"We've got to fully get behind Nathan and his team and the ideas with what he wants to do.

"We have to support him as a club and continue to try the best we can to give ourselves the best opportunity to turn the season around."

Grantham go into their first game of 2025 having suffered a 5-1 home defeat to Long Eaton United at the Meres on Boxing Day.

Abdul Saad had given the visitors a 12th minute lead which was cancelled out by Sam Muggleton's equaliser six minutes later.

Evan Garnett restored the visitors' advantage five minutes before the break with Long Eaton adding a further three goals in the second period.

Garnett and James Shaw both scored within eight minutes of each other before the former completed his hat-trick late on in the final match of Rawden's caretaker spell.

He said: "I thought we started alright but then conceded a sloppy goal.

"We got back on level terms and there wasn't much in the game at 1-1.

"Their second goal looked yards offside for me but we can't look for excuses.

"We are at the wrong end of the table because we haven't been good enough all season.

"We started the second half really poorly and our players just haven't been anywhere near the standards they should be for this football club."

After the New Year's Day match, Grantham host Loughborough Students at the Meres on Saturday.