Gillingham have appointed Nicky Shorey as the club’s head of recruitment.

Manager Neil Harris spoke recently about his desire to shake things up in terms of recruitment and bringing in someone to run the department was key to that.

Gills chairman Paul Scally said: "We've been looking to appoint someone in the role of head of recruitment for a while now and we are delighted to have Nicky Shorey on board. His energy and enthusiasm for the position, along with his knowledge of the game, were key in our thinking process.

"He joins us immediately and we look forward to working with him."

Shorey, who has two caps for England, is the man chosen by Harris as his head of recruitment.

As a player, Shorey, now 41, played for Reading, Aston Villa and West Brom as well as a number of other teams.

He had a brief spell as manager of Wingate & Finchley and had most recently been working as academy lead scout at Reading.

Harris has previously described the recruitment at Gillingham as a shambles and said: “The conditioning of the players isn’t good enough and ultimately it falls on me to get the best out of the players we have got.

“We have had too many injuries and that falls back on recruitment and the players that have been signed. (It’s about the) age of a player, injury record, references on players, ability to be able to repetitively train and play, it is something moving forward that has got to be addressed.

“You have to box clever. I have never run a football club and had injuries anything like this because I signed the right players at the right ages at the right condition.”

He led an overhaul of the way Cardiff City conducted their transfer business while, at Millwall, he was assisted by a head of recruitment and a network of scouts as they looked to pick up promising young talent.