Manager on player recruitment
United manager Greg Abbott spoke today about the type of player he is looking to attract ahead of the new campaign.
“The thing which goes in our favour is that players who have maybe lost their way a little bit know they will get a chance to play regular football here,” he said. “That is a definite selling point for us.
“The issue of location does come up but if a player wants to play it shouldn’t affect any decision to be made too much. If it does then we wouldn’t want the player here anyway. We want people who want to play for the club.”
“I don’t think we’ll be able to sign household names, because that’s where we are as a club,” he continued. “That means there’s a bit of an unknown excitement about what’s going to happen.
“We’ll do all the homework we need to do and we’ll know all about the players who are coming in and we think they’ll be different and they’ll be fresh.
“We’ll find some energy and pace to add to what we’ve got. We have a bit of experience and a bit of nouse from what we had last year and we have the young lads who have had a full season now. If we add the right things to that then we will have ourselves a very good team.”
“I think our fans want something different,” he explained. “They definitely want some excitement and if I brought in someone who was 35 or 36 years old then that probably wouldn’t bring that spark for them.
“Hopefully the players we find will bring that extra level of excitement because they will have the desire and hunger we need to see. We’ve had success stories with players who were established and we’ve had success stories with players who had that element of the unknown. I honestly think our fans are ready to see something a bit different so the work now is to go out and find that.”
“I’m much more relaxed about the timescale on getting the team together,” he concluded.
“Having done this for four or five years now I know it will happen. We’ve rushed into things before and what we want to do this time is make sure we get the right people in. If that takes more time then I’m comfortable with that.”
United Player subscribers can see a video interview with Greg Abbott now. Click HERE to go to the Player platform. Follow the same link for more information on United Player, and to subscribe.