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 season we identified as having a really good future. When we sat down, we sort of revisited that.

“We thought ‘Well, just because things didn’t work out in terms of timing last year, our thoughts on him - as a management team - haven’t really changed’, so we had a very short conversation with him.

“He was very keen to come back. He offers us versatility because he can play central midfield and in the full-back areas.

“All three of them sort of fitted the bill of what we were looking for - player-wise and culture-wise.”

The three new additions for the Hoops, last term’s Southern Counties East Premier Division (SCEFL) champions, will offer more strength-in-depth to their squad.

That’s something which King feels will be needed as the 2023/24 FA Vase Quarter-Finalists and Challenge Cup Semi-Finalists again attempt to compete across several fronts - at a higher level.

He said: “Our first aim was to try and retain our squad because they won SCEFL by nine points.

“In my opinion, we came very close in the Vase. We were very unlucky, looking back and seeing what happened in the latter rounds after we got knocked out.

“The last thing we were going to do is get excited and start operating on our squad, and making massive changes.

“Once we retained all the players that we wanted to, it was then about just adding in the right areas. We feel we have done that.

“They’re players who could easily come into our starting side and improve our starting XI but, also, that means some of the players who started last year will add that depth to what we’re doing.

“We have got 42 league games to play and the cup competitions, so it’s going to be an awful lot of football.

“There’s no such thing in football now as a starting XI. ‘What’s your best XI?’ is a pretty pointless question because you play so much football that the luxury of having everyone to pick from and decide your strongest XI, that hardly ever happened last season!

“We’re happy with the depth of the squad. But I’m not stupid. We’re going up a level, so we’re going to look at it in pre-season, assess after 10, maybe 12, games.

“If we need to strengthen in certain other areas at that point, we won’t be afraid to do it.

“But I certainly think the rest of the squad deserve that chance in pre-season and at the start of the season to show they can make that step up.”

Preparations are already well under way for the new season - with Deal returning for pre-season training tonight.

“We’re starting a little bit earlier than we would have liked,” admitted King.

“But, while trying to meet the players’ needs with the Euros on, we have avoided training on nights that England are playing. That loses Thursday and Tuesday next week.

“So, we just decided to come back a week earlier. The first friendly is on July 2 (at home to Whitstable).

“I have done eight or nine pre-seasons now, so I’m quite happy with the format and the number of sessions.

“We’re looking forward to getting back. These are exciting times.”

Long-serving striker Connor Coyne has signed for Southern Counties East Division 1 side Canterbury City after leaving Deal this summer.