Manager George Elokobi says Maidstone’s summer transfer business has been “relatively straightforward”.

United have brought in seven new recruits in pre-season so far, the latest of which are midfielder Conor Kelly and striker Ogo Obi.

They open their National League South campaign at home to Slough on Saturday (3pm kick-off) but perhaps with fewer recruits than many people expected.

Elokobi understands where fans are coming from, but has actively chosen to keep numbers tight.

“To be honest, the recruitment has been relatively straightforward because of how open we’ve gone about our business in terms of having conversations with players,” said Elokobi.

“Meeting players face to face, it makes it a little bit easier to sell your vision and the objectives for this football club.

“They get to feel it and, when it comes from the manager, they know you truly want to acquire their services. So, for me, it’s been straightforward and enjoyable.

“We’ve missed out on one or two but we’ve got 80-85% of our targets and there were a couple more who really wanted to come here but we just preferred other individuals.

“As a management team, as a board, we are quite happy with the business we’ve done. I do understand the little worries about a lack of numbers but it’s not a lack of numbers.

“I had to cut down the squad. We used, I believe, 37-38 players last season. That’s quite a lot. I made a decision on going with a smaller squad this season. That’s my decision and I put that forward to the board.

“The reason being I want all our players that are signed to this football club to be a part of it going forward.

“There might be one or two injuries - hopefully not as bad as last season - but I trust the work myself and the management team have been doing with the players to prepare them physically.

“I do understand people’s concerns but at this level you don’t want a squad of 26-27 because you can only utilise 22 at a time (on the training ground).

“We’ve got to factor in where we train. There aren’t extra pitches where maybe myself or Craig (Fagan, assistant manager) can take a group of players.

“We had it last season where there were seven players on the sidelines because there were too many players, so how is that productive to the squad?

“You learn from the past and you move on. I’ve got a set way of how I want us to do things going forward and that’s how we’re doing it.

“There haven’t been any issues yet and, touch wood, it stays that way.”

Maidstone have had a mixed pre-season at least in terms of results, losing to lower-league sides. That doesn’t concern Elokobi, who has assured fans everything is on track for the new campaign.

He said: “You don’t win anything in pre-season, do you?

“It’s a new squad I’m building so everyone needs to remember that and sometimes it takes a little time to adapt and adjust, both for the new players and the ones we retained.

“In my experience of pre-season, the first four or five games are always disjointed where you’re building the players’ minutes up and looking at trialists to see if there are any talents that can add value to what we’re doing here.

“In terms of putting my stamp on things, there’s a style of play I’d like to have - I can’t give too much away - and we’re happy with what we’ve got in and how pre-season has gone and how the team is beginning to gel.

“In your head you want it to click straight away but it doesn’t work like that.

“We get to work, we take it one training session at a time and we get to find out how good our players are at retaining information in terms of how we want them to do things because they all come from different environments.

“It’s exciting to be the manager of this football club, with our management team. We strive to do our best every single day to ensure we help our players and we leave no stone unturned.”

Maidstone ended pre-season with a 4-0 triumph at home to Lewes last weekend. Both Levi Amantchi and Lamar Reynolds bagged braces.