by Alex Hoad

Tony Burman insists Dartford will make four or five new signings soon, after welcoming several new faces to their opening pre-season training session.

The Darts boss admits preparing for life in Blue Square Bet Premier has proved ‘frustrating’ but, despite being knocked back by some of his targets, he remains confident of strengthening his squad in the coming weeks.

Dartford were joined by several trialists at their first training session on Tuesday night and Burman said: "We had some new faces there – some guys were there to see what we’re like and we invited some down to see what they’re like.

"Some of them we approached and some others approached us.

"We’ll see how things go. I’m not saying too much about it at this stage."

He said: "It’s no secret we are trying to bring in players. We need to strengthen the squad, but unfortunately we have not been able to do that before pre-season started.

"Hopefully things will liven up this month and we can bring four or five new players in. It will happen, it’s just a matter of when.

"We are moving to a different level on and off the field and it is a steep learning curve.

"We’ve had Conference Premier players who have come to us and spoken about joining us and that’s great.

"One or two players we have targeted might have gone elsewhere, but there are a lot of players for us to look at.

"You can only do what you can do. If someone turns you down it doesn’t make them a bad person or us a bad club. It just means another door opens elsewhere.

"We have spoken to a lot of players whose contracts were up on June 30, so there are going to be a lot of good players still on the market in July and August. We have got to be patient, we want to get it right."

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