Both Cray Valley (PM) and Welling United might have won the pre-season friendly at the Artic Stadium but the game ended in an entertaining draw. After the game, Welling manager Steve Lovell confirmed that the pre-season campaign was still a work in progress.

“I still think that we’re a few players away from what we’d really like but we’ll keep trying to build.” he said. 

“There will be a few more players on Tuesday night that people can have a look at. We’ve narrowed it down now to the boys that we want to stay with us and it’s an opportunity for these boys coming in to show us what they can do.”

As confirmed in previous interviews, he will use loans when necessary. “We will have a loan player in on Tuesday and I’ve spoken to a number of league clubs about loaning out players before the season starts.” he confirmed.

“I like to try to get people signed up so that they’re with us so I want to give these boys an opportunity on Tuesday to show us what they can do. If they are good enough, we’ll sign them and that will save us in the loan market.”

“I don’t want to go into the loan market head on and use all our loan deals up before we have to as we might have a couple of injuries and we might have to go into the loan market. Let’s wait and see what these boys are like on Tuesday and we’ll take it from there.” 

During the week, Welling had suffered a heavy defeat at Worthing. Of the Cray Valley game, Lovell said “Better than it was on Tuesday, although it couldn’t get any worse to be honest. The boys responded very well and it was a very good work-out against a very good side again. It could have gone either way. We had chances, they had chances, but the main thing is about getting minutes in the legs for the boys. 

“A lot of people got an hour or more and I had a look at a couple more trialists as well. It’s getting there. It’s going to be a long process but we can see a bit of light at the end of the tunnel so in two weeks time we’ll be a lot stronger and we’ll be in a better position to judge what we can do.”

However, there are concerns with the fitness of some of the players. Lovell said “There are certain people out there who aren’t quite fit enough yet and they need to be. We’ve only got two weeks and they’ve got to work hard and get themselves properly prepared for the start of the season.”

Against Cray Valley the scores were level when the hosts were awarded a spot kick. Lovell said “The penalty that they got was a bit silly. It hit him on his hand and it was only a yard away from him but you’re going to get loads and loads of decisions this year that are going to go for us and against us so we’ve just got to accept them. If they give them, fine, if they don’t, then we can’t do anything about it.” 

The penalty was saved by the trialist goalkeeper and Lovell said “It was a good save, a very good save. He’s a good young keeper and he’ll have a bright future ahead of him but we’ve got two more games coming up and we’ll see what happens.”

Pictures supplied by Dave Budden.