Gillingham’s new manager John Coleman will have the final say on players signings this month.
The Gills were already well advanced in negotiations for new players, ahead of Coleman’s appointment, to help give their stuttering promotion campaign a shot in the arm. The new manager will have an input in any new deals.
Gillingham managing director Joe Comper said the club has “a few irons in the fire” and “a few names and deals which have either tentatively been agreed or are in place.”
Coleman’s first day at the club was on Monday and he met with head of recruitment Andy Hessenthaler to discuss which players should come and go.
Speaking on Monday, Comper said: “We’ve started work with John going: ‘Is it yes, you want to crack on with those because you know them? Is it no, I know them and I absolutely don’t want to?’ Or is it :‘Hang on, let me do a bit of work?’
“It might delay us by a day or two whilst we’re allowing John to do his due diligence.
“But as always here, certainly since I’ve been in this role, the manager will have the final say on what we do in the transfer window.
“Brad (Galinson, the owner) is supporting us with that in terms of giving us some room for manoeuvre. It’s not necessarily a case of one out, one in.
“We will probably see a few go out because they either want to move on with their own personal situations or because we do have quite a large squad.
“We’ve got the ability to bring a few in to help John and Jimmy,” Comper continued. “They’re not coming here purely having to work with what we’ve got.
“We’ve got the ability to do something. I imagine a lot of the stuff that we do would be loans because you probably get more value for loans at this moment in time in this window than necessarily going and paying fees.
“We’re not going to go silly like we maybe did two Januarys ago, because we’re in many ways still suffering for that window two years ago, because our wage bill is much higher than probably it needs to be.
“We certainly expect to be doing a few bits in January for sure.”
Coleman is well positioned to know what the situation is in the transfer market – he left a recruitment role at Gills’ League 2 rivals Chesterfield to take over as manager at Priestfield.
The new boss had been working with Chesterfield boss Paul Cook to try and find new talent for them.
He joked: “His (Cook’s) first thing was, ‘don’t be giving them the players you were lining up for us!’”
