Kennington manager Dan Scorer is still intent on improving his squad despite finishing last season at the summit of SCEFL Division One, writes Joe Harbert.

The Ton, who have seen Sam Conlon and Tad Greenfield retire and midfielder Sam Brown leave due to work obligations over the summer, did announce their first arrival of the season at the weekend.

Nineteen-year-old James Jeffrey joined the Ashford-based side late on Friday evening from Chatham Town - one of at least three new additions Scorer hopes to make ahead of their upcoming campaign.

He said: "The majority of the squad have stayed, which is obviously good - no one has left for any reason other than work and family commitments.

"But at the same time we do need to fill those spots because I like to keep things nice and competitive, and that's probably the main reason why we had such a successful season last year, so we expect to see three or four new faces come in.

"The loss of Sam Brown will be quite big for us in the middle of the park, so we'll be looking to strengthen in central midfield and in wide areas.

"We had two players in Tom Scorer and Sam Conlon playing the majority of last season out wide when neither of them naturally played there, so hopefully we can strengthen in those positions and give ourselves a real chance of getting promoted and taking the club even further forward.

"Retaining most of the squad will also make it easier to keep my ideas and philosophy - the players all buy into what we do and like the way we play, but at this level you've got to be able to mix it up.

"We can attack and do so really well with forwards in the side that can cause problems for any defence, and that's been shown in every cup game we've played against higher teams.

"At the same time, there are matches where you need to be a little bit more ruthless and keeping teams under pressure, and we showed that by being joint top scorers in the league, so that's certainly something we'll be looking to do again."

Despite narrowly missing out on securing a place in SCEFL's Premier Division in each of the last two seasons, including last term due to coronavirus, Kennington's promotion-chasing boss believes they will be even better prepared this season as a result.

He added: "I want to be a part of getting us to step five. It would have been nice too to see us in the FA Cup this year, but I'm not sure that's going to happen with the late start, but hopefully we'll get there in the future.

"What I do know is that we're certainly stronger than last season mentally, and a lot of the team have already played at a higher level and are experienced enough to pull the side through difficult times.

"So we'll certainly be looking to open up a gap between ourselves and the team in fifth and sixth place, because with six games to go last year we could have finished as champions or even in eighth place.

"We also finished four points off the top after our first season coming out of the Kent County League, and that was actually really gutting in the end.

"So it will be the same aim again this season - getting in the top four will still be the priority for the first three-quarters of the year, and then we'll see where we're at then."

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