Andy Hessenthaler’s return to the Crabble hot seat leaves the former Gillingham and Eastleigh boss facing comfortably one of the toughest tests of his managerial career.
“We’ve got to start winning football matches or else we will run out of time,” the Dover boss told us this week.
“There’s a long way to go yet and we won’t write ourselves off just yet, but we are making it difficult for ourselves!”
His frank assessment came after his side’s midweek defeat to Dagenham and Redbridge left his side five points adrift at the foot of the National League.
“The second goal was typical Dover of the goals that they’ve let in before we came in – just can’t defend crosses or corners,” bemoaned the Dover boss.
“If it means that we’ve got to find a way of bringing players in then I’m going to have to speak to the Chairman about it. We’re going to have to get onto the training ground and go again. It’s been difficult as a few of the players still aren’t playing on a full-time basis, and after Tuesday we’re looking for a new centre half as Connor (Essam) has played his last game for the club as he can’t commit!”
“I’m sure that he’ll find another club and quickly – I can’t blame him for that as he’s got to think about his family and his future, but we must consider the others in the group who are all in full time. I didn’t really want to deal with it so soon, but I’m going to have to…”
“There’s a lot of younger players out there, but in our position is that what we really need? Do we need a young player in this predicament?”
“Probably not, I wouldn’t think so, so we need someone with a CV in hand for the position that we’re in. It’s a shame about Connor – we’d worked it because he was self-employed, but unfortunately now that’s become full-time with his company and he’s looking at his future life and that’s not all football – it’s a shame because I’ve known Connor for a long time and he’s been a good servant for me.”
There are rumours around Crabble that the manager is interested in one or possibly more of the current Ebbsfleet United squad given their recent off the field problems.
Hessenthaler admitted, “Ebbsfleet have got some very good players and I’m sure that there are teams looking at that situation and may be ready to pounce. Are we one of those? Yeah probably!”
”Truth is that we weren’t good enough first half on Tuesday night and although it was better in the second half, it was nowhere near good enough.”
“But listen, we’ve got to keep working with the boys and have some belief in them and to be fair they did respond in the week – I hope they could understand me after I was throwing my arms around and punching the walls and the rest of what I was doing which wasn’t great, but sometimes you have to get it off your chest.”
“I guess that before we came here, it had surprised me where the club was given where they’d been in the last couple of years.”
“But Chris (Kinnear) did say that the recruitment in the summer hadn’t been as good as he would have really liked, and I think it does come down to that, as the club has lost strikers in the last couple of years – they’ve had goals in the team that helped them that aren’t there now.”
“I believe that we’re making progress, but the worrying thing is that we’re not running out of games as there are a lot left still and obviously our aim is to finish 20th in this League to stay up.”
“The disappointing thing is that we’ve not lost successive games against teams around us and so we’ve got to address it quickly – there’s a lot of work to be done.”
“The boys know what I expect from them and hopefully these two games might just be the kick in the teeth that they need and push on from that now.”
“We’ve got two weeks after Saturday until our next League game which should give us the time to get some changes to the squad by the time we go to Halifax. That said, watch us go and win at Bury in the Cup,” Hessenthaler added smiling, “that’s how it happens sometimes in football when you’re struggling in the League and have fantastic Cup runs. But Saturday is our focus now and Maidenhead at home.”