Deal Town boss Steve King on the signing of ex-Folkestone Invicta defender Josh Vincent as Jack Paxman and Elliott Moore rejoin for Isthmian South East season

Boss Steve King has explained why he’s recruited Deal’s trio of summer signings ahead of their inaugural Isthmian South East season.

Full-back Jack Paxman and versatile defender Elliott Moore have rejoined while former long-serving Folkestone defender Josh Vincent arrives from Faversham.

“We’re really pleased,” said King. “Obviously, they’re three different signings in a way but they all offer us something that we need.

“Jack Paxman makes sense. It’s pretty obvious. We felt that right-back was an area which we didn’t properly nail down last year.

“We had three or four players do it across the season so, when Jack became available and spoke to me, that was pretty much a no-brainer to bring him back. We know all about him.

“With Josh Vincent, we felt - with being promoted - we needed a bit of experience, certainly defensively.

“We probably conceded too many goals last year.

“I know that sounds stupid when you win the league! But, in those big games, we didn’t keep that many clean sheets against teams in the top five or six.

“We don’t think that our players aren’t good enough. It’s just that we thought we maybe needed a little bit of experience in there - and there’s no one more experienced than Josh!

“He has been there, done it, and wants to play centre-half now, which worked for us in terms of being an area we wanted to strengthen.

“I know that he went off to Faversham last year but he fits into our culture of loyal players, sticking around for projects. He played more than 600 games for Folkestone. That’s an unbelievable achievement.

“Elliott is someone who it didn’t quite work out for with us last season. He ended up playing for four different clubs (Deal, Folkestone, Kennington and Lydd).

“But he’s someone that last