Jimmy Adams admitted Kent didn’t enjoy the success he had wanted this season, but says he has seen progress which he hopes will lead to trophies in 2014.

The Kent coach also revealed he is already discussing an overseas signing for 2014 but says he hopes to keep his squad largely intact, despite a year of frustration in all-three forms of the game, with Kent finishing more than 50 points off the promotion pace in LV= County Championship Division 2 and missing out on the knockout stages in the YB40 and Friends Life t20 competitions.

Adams insisted he had ‘no regrets’ from the season and added: “There were many positives. For me, we didn’t get the results we wanted generally, but I’m not walking away thinking that we have not made progress. The pressure on us is how we can build on what we saw this year.”

He added: “I think as a squad we are further along than we were last year. We had a more settled team last year, a lot of senior guy coming in and settling things down.

“The trade-off this year was seeing young guys coming in, putting their hands up in the middle and getting themselves counted - that’s a healthy sign for any county.”

The West Indian added: “There are a lot of positives. You had three batsmen clearing 1,000 runs, you had young Ben Harmison who really came good this season, played some very critical innings.

“You had some of the younger batsmen, who while they’ll claim they didn’t have good seasons, people like Sam Northeast and Daniel Bell-Drummond, I think we all know it’s part of any young player’s learning curve.

“Their attitude when things weren't going well was top-drawer, and then towards the end of the season they both came up with innings that we needed.”

Adams admitted: “Suffice to say it’s been a hell of a learning experience. The pressure on us is how quickly we can learn from all the experiences we have gone through to keep moving forward as a group.”

He added: “I’m hoping we have pretty much a settled squad going forward. The core of the squad is already here, but we’re still in a position where me might look at overseas options next year, but we have a bit of thinking and planning to do before we can sign off on anything like that.”

Despite missing out on a challenge for promotion back to the top-flight this summer, Adams revealed: “Next year it will be a case of putting our best foot forward in all competitions right from the start to try and enable us to go through in at least one of the tournaments.

“Apart from wanting to win trophies you also want to see team moving in right direction, if at end of 2014 we can see signs that have made progress then fine, but it would be nice to have trophies to add to that too.”