With still nearly three weeks to go until his first team squad report for pre-season training, Gillingham boss Gareth Ainsworth has been talking to KSN and here he discusses his new look squad as it starts to take shape. 

Seb Palmer-Houlden is Ainsworth’s first new signing of the summer and has moved to Kent from Championship Bristol City after featuring through last season for Dundee in the Scottish Premier Division. 

It’s a signing that has the manager excited as he told us, “He’s going to bring an absolute relentless work rate to Gillingham and a want to score goals which is obviously after the past few years here is something that we want to improve, and Seb has an unbelievable record at youth and reserve level.”

“He went to Scotland on loan and showed what he is capable of in glimpses – I think that he will complement this team and this squad really well and I think that the Rainham End are going to love him because he never stops running, he never stops chasing and he is very much my type of player.”

“We think that we have got him at the right time as he’s going to have a good career this boy and we are excited to bring him to Priestfield.”

“He can play in a variety of positions, but he is an out and out forward who scores all sorts of goals; I have coached players who are very similar to him in the past and I am hoping that he can give us that platform at the front for us that we desperately want to add to it.”

“Elliott Nevitt, Joe Gbode and the others coming back – Josh Andrews, Marcus Wyllie – strikers coming back into the reckoning and he certainly compliments that forward group. It’s goals that we have been missing.” 

“It’s really important that he had the season in Scotland in senior football and he’s got it now under his belt. Going to Scotland sometimes can be tough, especially on artificial surfaces and playing a variety of games up there from playing Celtic and Rangers to the teams who scrap to stay in the SPL.”

“It would have been a real good experience for him, but it’s the English game where he wants to be – he wants to be a centre-forward playing for a team with something on it, and I think his progress was just a little bit blocked at Bristol City as they have some brilliant strikers and he has made a really brave decision to say that he can do this and go and forward his career playing every week.”

“It speaks volumes for him – he is a big size; six feet plus and once we get him in our regime, our intensity and the way that we want to play him, I am sure that he will be a success!” 

“No player will come into the building now without my saying yes – that’s something that I want to make clear as there have been all sorts of stories about recruitment in the past here,” the Gills boss underlined.

“No one will get in the door here unless I say yes and that was one of my non-negotiables from the start. Hess (Andy Hessenthaler) and I go back a long way, James Harrison is very adept at the computers and the stats – we work really well and then include Ronnie Jepson, who I made my League debut alongside in 1991, we have a good team there on the ground, but with me being the manager, me being the one who takes the success and the failure on the Saturday, it is important that they are my players.”

“We go through hundreds of players, but Seb was spotted before I even spotted him, so there was good work done there and I definitely put my seal of approval on it, and I am certain he will be a positive signing for Gillingham.” 

Picture supplied by Gillingham Football Club.