New Herne Bay player-manager Liam Friend will look to find right balance between experience and youth for 2025/26 Isthmian South East season

New Herne Bay player-boss Liam Friend faces a balancing act this summer.

Friend is hard at work, assembling his squad ahead of Bay’s 2025/26 Isthmian South East season after a poor 16th-placed finish.

That saw Herne Bay use plenty of youngsters in their 2024/25 season run-in and, while Friend hopes to keep them around, it would be unfair to place too much pressure on those youth-team prospects as they make the step up to senior football.

“We’re looking to keep some [from their 2024/25 first-team squad] around,” he said. “There were some good things going on last year but, at the same time, we weren’t happy with finishing 16th.

“If you keep things exactly the same and expect different results, that’s not really the way forward.

“We also finished with six or seven under-23s being involved at the end of last season. Some of them did very well and played a lot of games.

“In regards to (adding) experience, it doesn’t need to be a player in their late-30s - like the manager is!

“It’s more about players that have experience at the level. That can be a 21-year-old who has played 100 games or a 30-year-old.

“As much as we want the youth-team players to be involved, we have a duty of care to them.

“We want to keep that pathway open but, at the same time, we need to have that balance between that player pathway and being successful on the pitch.”

Bay are on the hunt for a new No.1 after Harley Earle departed for rivals Ashford.

Young Gillingham loanee Taite Holtam, Harry Brooks, Thomas Crump, Josh Bexon, Sam Freeman and Kie Plumley also turned out between the sticks for Bay.

Vastly-experienced defender Friend said: “We conceded far too many goals last year.

“We also, I believe, had seven keepers and that’s not breeding consistency.