Richard Dobson is backing Steven Craig to succeed as Gillingham’s Assistant Manager after replacing him in the Priestfield dugout.

Dobson’s former seat on the bench has been taken by Craig who has joined the Club from Gala Fairydean Rovers, but as the new Technical Director explained is no stranger to either himself nor the manager.

“We brought Stevie down from Partick Thistle where he did ever so well to Wycombe. He was around thirty at the time and wanted to come down and try his luck in England.”

“He trialled with us and got injured in his final trial game. We hadn’t seen enough to make the decision, and he came to us and said I want to play for this Club.”

“I know that you think I have done alright so far, but want to see a little bit more, so I will take a really low wage to come and play for you.”

“He did and played over fifty games for us – when you have people like that who want to play for the Club, you can build around them, and he was one of those people.”

“Brilliant in the dressing room, he has bit of gravitas about him, tells people how it is, and I think that people respect that. We’ve kept in contact down the years and when the opportunity came about and we were bandying names about that could be, Stevie was one who had the qualities that Gareth wanted to work alongside him.” 

“Stevie will be different from me – we are all different in the way that we work – but I think that it is Stevie’s time to go and prove himself at this level and bring something different to the fold.” 

The Gills boss went on record early on saying that he wanted at least six new faces and on the day his squad returned to training, he had just that.

James Brophy has been followed in the door so far by Zane Albarus, Will Goodwin, Liam Gordon and Kadeem Harris, along with goalkeepers Ollie Wright and Lennon MacLorg.

Dobson told us how the club are still looking at making additions:

“We’re working on one or two more, the wheels are certainly in motion. We try to keep things in house as much as we can – we are confident, we know the ones that we wanted – they are close and hopefully we will have some news over the coming days.”

“As always, these things take time, it’s not something that you can just pick up a phone, and it gets done that day. So, until it signed and sealed, we don’t want to give too much away.”

“We have two or three that we still want to bring in – we have targets who have been spoken to and now it’s just a waiting game. Sometimes when it’s a loanee you’re at the beck and call of the parent club and with it being a World Cup summer, it means that other players will get a chance pre-season as those in the States will need a period of a break meaning that some of the younger squad members will get more minutes pre-season than they normally would as Clubs need them to fulfil fixtures.”

“So, it’s a waiting game but we have had the conversations, we are ahead of the game on that, and now it’s just a question of being patient.”