The Urban Warriors endured a stop-start campaign as they finished outside the top eight, but the Dutchman believes their off-season work was good enough to see them fly up the standings.
"Looking at last season when we said we want to win the League, the team was really weakened, but and now the team is much stronger so we are definitely looking for a position higher up the log," he says.
"Top four, top five is where Ajax belongs on the log table, and hopefully one day we can also say we have won the League title. That would be great, but we are not going to put ourselves under too much pressure … we want to make sure we have a better season then last year."
Stekelenberg acknowledges that it will take some time to gel his team into a solid unit, but says a degree of continuity will make things much easier.
"Last year we came from a season where we lost the League title on the last day, so basically there was one thing to say and that was that we wanted to win the League which, of course, we knew would be difficult," he adds.
"We lost some quality players last year like Thulani Serero, Hans Vonk, Clayton Daniels and Sameehg Doutie, but it's a little different this season. We have only lost George Maluleka from our starting line-up, and also Brett Evans."
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