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Nick Gearing admits the prospect of bringing on youngsters in tune with his footballing philosophies was a key factor in him accepting the Herne Bay manager’s job.
The former Gillingham and Leyton Orient coach is already in the process of shaping his squad having been appointed as the full-time successor to former management duo John Embery and Jermaine Darlington.
A modest budget comes as no concern to Gearing after Bay recently dismissed administration fears having faced financial difficulties during the season.
He said: “I was sort of missing football in all honesty and thought I’d love to go into management. When they (Herne Bay) contacted me I thought it was something I wanted to do and understood the money wouldn’t be fantastic for budgets, they were honest with me. I knew what I was going into but more recently it’s got better.
“When you think about the budget it’s not going to be at the top end of the league by any means, probably quite the opposite. I believe in myself as a coach. I’m hoping we can make up that extra sort of 10%, 20% of points with our coaching ability.
“Next year will probably be a low average age, but the good thing about younger players is that they’ve been coached to play the way I probably want. We’ll be very much about expansive total football.
“They’re coached to play that way and will most likely be like sponges to it. We’ll have a few experienced players in there too but on the whole with budgets and the way we want to work it will be a fairly young team.
“I spoke to all the players after the game against Phoenix Sports. I want to be honest to people. There is a good chance some of the higher earners and experienced players will be looking elsewhere, maybe even some of the younger ones as they’ve given themselves a platform to play on.”
Gearing will be equipped with both his own network in the game and the lengthy contact book of assistant Chris Woollcott as he seeks to strengthen his squad.
He added: “We know between myself, Chris Woollcott and Nicky Lewis, a good amount of players we’d be able to get in. A lot of the ones I know are probably young players from when I was at Gillingham, but Chris Woollcott has got a phenomenal list.
“When this first came about he was telling me five players for every position, he knows this level really well. Both Chris and Nicky know how I want to play and completely agree with it, if they didn’t I probably wouldn’t be doing this in the first place.”
Video analysis is also set to be incorporated into Gearing’s management, having used it throughout the early stages of his career.
“That’s something I’m going to make sure we’ve got,” he said.
“I want to get a lad in that will do the analysis side of things for me, I'm going to teach him how to do it.
“It gives the opportunity for players to see themselves, watch the game back and see what was good and what was bad. They get to think about it on a mid-week evening rather than in that pressured moment, so when it comes to training they've actually got a few more pictures to look at in their head that are probably more relevant.”
