With little over a month until the new Football League season starting, KSN have caught up with Richard Dobson after taking on his new role at Gillingham.

The start of the new EFL season is just over six weeks away, and the Gillingham players have been reporting back after a summer that has seen the Club change the way that new players are brought to MEMS Priestfield with former assistant boss Richard Dobson being the man tasked to find the right matches. 

Dobson, who has been boss Gareth Ainsworth’s long-time right-hand man, took on a new role at the Club at the end of last season – that of Technical Director – and we caught up with him at Priestfield earlier this week prior to the players reporting back to pre-season training on July 2nd. 

“We’ve spent the summer very busy and it’s been very different to anything that I’ve known before,” Dobson admitted as we wanted to go through the processes that the Gills are now adopting to try and find the right formula to bring winning ways back to the faithful.  

“Recruitment is the priority at this moment in time obviously – whilst summer can be a time to relax for some, it’s been really full on since the start of the role two months ago.”

“It’s work that has to be done so that we are right going into the new season – it’s something that I need to get right and help the others get right so that we can hit the ground running with so many new faces coming in.” 

“This as a job is always a combination of many people – sometimes individuals get charred with a brush that they have made poor choices; there is a number of people involved in the process, and what we have done over the summer is to organise a structure… we have a new analyst in on recruitment who has been very good so far, providing the data for us on who the targets are, do they suit the way that we want to play and provide the numbers.”

“It’s then up to us to interpret the numbers and find context behind it to see whether the footage that we have been watching matches the numbers and if not, why?”

“You have to trust your eye and your judgement – for me, twenty-five years of coaching you have a lot of experience and a lot of knowledge, a lot of understanding of what is required in this division.”

“I always say that you don’t take a knife to a gunfight – you have to understand the profile of League Two!” 

“Just look at the sides at the top end of the division last year and what they were all about. That’s the benchmark of what we need to have!” 

“We’re trying to find players who are different from who we have had in the past in certain areas; a little bit of strength and resilience that is needed in this division – it’s been a fascinating, but a very busy time, but to see the process in progress and the way we have set it up with the use of data allied to watching hours and hours and hours of footage, it’s been good.” 

“The end stage is the recruitment panel who determine whether the player fits what we are trying to do; whether there’s a risk of an injury history – and I think it’s fair to say that if you scanned every single football player in the League you would find something there – it’s not about whether they have been injured or not, it’s amount the risk of re-injury and whether the wage that you’re paying them takes the risk away to some degree… we could talk about players history with injuries all day long but we want to try and steer clear of some of that.”

“There are injuries that mean nothing in terms of reoccurrence, but they are mitigated with the wages that we offer, and I think that we have been really sensible in that regard over the summer.” 

Reflecting on the very start of the process when players have to be released at the end of a season, Dobson admitted, “It’s really hard and doesn’t get any easier! Sometimes you have to look people in the eye who you really like and tell them that it’s the end of their time at the Football Club – they are human beings with families behind them, some have got mortgages to pay!”

“You know it’s the easiest thing in the world to click a button on a computer game to release somebody, when you have to sit there and tell someone to the face, sending them into the mix with two and half to three thousand other footballers who are also out of a job suddenly, it’s an incredibly tough time for the boys!” 

“There is a human element to this that must never be underestimated, but it is also part of the job and football moves on and in an ideal world we will have a core group that we will take with us for five, six, seven years and we grow the Club around them!”

“It’s nice for fans when they see a player over a long period of time – there is an identity that player brings to a Club and when you keep chopping and changing so often and the squad changes so much, it can be hard for that identity to carry on.”

“I know that we have made a lot of changes this summer, but we are building an identity that we want this Club to become and be really sure on the players coming in to reflect that identity…” 

“We all wish the boys that have previously represented the Club all the very best, it’s a tough time for them – I know three of them have been training with the PFA this week and that tells you how hard it is to find a Club for the first of July.”

“I hope they all find new Clubs and I really wish them well in their careers, but it’s part and parcel of the game and a really tough part to deal with!”