Dover Athletic returned to pre-season training this week with Chairman Jim Parmenter’s warning of the club’s financial position still very much to the fore.
KSN has been talking to boss Andy Hessenthaler about the position as the Dover manager faces potentially the toughest pre-season of his illustrious career.
Hessenthaler told us, “Now that the fixtures have come out for the EFL, I’m hoping that ours will come out soon even though we’ve only just gone back to pre-season (training) this past weekend.
“We came in on Saturday for testing and getting the group together for a COVID meeting and actually began training on Monday, but now the league fixtures are out we all know that its getting closer by the day – I think ours are announced first week of September – so we’ll soon now where we’re at!”
A big uncertainty facing all National League side still is what day their season will actually start. “Everyone seems convinced that it’s going to be October 3rd, but no-one seems to have confirmed it yet” the Dover boss admitted.
“Talking to the Chairman, no-one has confirmed it with him, but that’s the date that we’re working towards. It seems really strange that we still haven’t been officially told when we’re starting. I always thought it would be October as I had a gut feeling the way that things were working out – all I know for sure is that we’re going to be playing a lot of games the first month or so!”
“We normally do in the National League in the opening period, but we definitely will be this time and we’re going to need a squad, but obviously everyone now knows our problems at the moment. I’ve had some good meetings with the Chairman and I’m starting to get a picture of what money I can use to try and bring players in.
“We’re not going to be training at the ground for a spell as we cant afford the training ground fee so we have to train at Dover – that in itself brings a challenge to myself to try to attract players to come all the way down to the ground to train!”
Given all of the club’s financial constraints, Hessenthaler knows that whatever side he puts out for the clubs first game will be somewhat different to the last one that represented the club.
“We lost quite a few from last year’s squad,” he said. “We lost Bobby (Jo Taylor) just last week to Ebbsfleet; Nassim Nghoul left by mutual consent to be fair to him; Lee Worgan has gone too as he’s been offered a full time job at a private school which gives him a lot more security along with the others that left at the end of last season who were out of contract.
“We’re still got a core that we can work on and build on – we’ve just got to pick and choose very carefully financially what we can bring in. It’s going to be a fight; its going to be a challenge and a fight to stay in the division, but we know that we’re not going to be the only team with other teams around us in a similar situation. We were one of the first clubs to actually come out and say that we’re financially struggling and trying all to pull together to get through it.”
“I think that by the Chairman being so open could have probably helped us. I’d rather be like that as I’m an honest guy – I’d rather people be honest as I’m an honest as a manager as I was a player – I’d rather the Chairman tell me how it is and he’s pretty much come out and done that.
“We’ve all got to work together in this situation, and I suppose me as a character I’m almost thriving on the challenge as I love a challenge and I’m a battler. That’s how I battled as a player and I’ll battle as a manager – it’s almost as though I’m thriving on it, so we get through it.”
“There are some irons in the fire but the difficulties in any signing is where we’re going to be training and financially what we can afford. Let’s be honest, there are a lot of players out there as I’m being rung daily by agents as you can imagine and players too asking if they can come on trial. We are certainly going to be bringing players in (on trial) and we’re going to do it very carefully and not rush into it.
“Another reason for that is whoever we bring in, you’re almost asking them to train and not get paid because if you sign a player now, you’ve got to pay them – or they’re going to be looking to get paid – during pre-season. And that’s something we just can’t do – it’s almost as though we sign them, and they come and train, but we can’t pay them until the season starts.
“That’s another hurdle – there are irons in the fire and we’re talking to a few; there will be trialists and they’ll be announced in the next few weeks and lets see if we can get a group together of around eighteen players and get through this along with the Youth section which we wont be opposed to use – we’ve got a good academy – and if we’ve got to use the kids, then that is what we will do.”