Herne Bay manager Steve Lovell open to promoting under-23 players despite flurry of summer additions

Boss Steve Lovell is open to giving youth an opportunity at Herne Bay.

Mark Taylor is back at Winch’s Field and will manage their under-23s side after a productive 2022/23 season with Faversham.

Lovell wants to see Taylor enjoy similar success at Isthmian South East Bay which, in turn, could help them uncover a gem or two.

“I think under-23s are important at clubs like ours,” said Welshman Lovell.

“I’ll be speaking to Mark on a regular basis and he’ll be reporting back to me on the players who are improving and should be around the first-team.

“I’m all for giving youth a chance and, if there’s players good enough, then they’re old enough.

“It’s not a matter of ‘This is the first-team squad and there’s the under-23s squad’ - we’re all in it together. It’s one club.

“There might be one or two under-23s who start the season. You don’t know at this stage.

“Hopefully he can produce, have a season like he did last year and that’ll help us in the first-team.”

It was a busy weekend for Bay, who unveiled the summer signing of player-coach Liam Friend, the returns to the club of Dan Carrington, Troy Howard, Mobolaji Dawodu and midfielder Danny Walder, and the arrivals of goalkeepers Josh Bexon and George Bentley plus Kane Rowland, Archie Burnett and Daniel Haastrup.

Lovell revealed: “It hasn’t been a busy week, really. It’s built up from the start when we took over.

“I didn’t, obviously, advertise any of the signings until we’d got quite a few in and then I thought we’d do them over a few days.

“That’s what we have done - and there will be another three or four coming out at the weekend.

“It’s all building up to a nice squad.

“There’s a mixture of experience and youth, with boys that I know and have worked with before.

“No one