Sutton United returned to pre-season training tonight (Tuesday), with Paul Doswell looking forward to a pre-season schedule that will have a greater emphasis on the training ground rather than friendlies. ‘’In the past couple of seasons we’ve reached the end of the friendlies having had quite enough of them, and with a good number of last season’s squad still being with us we made the decision to concentrate on working on the training ground rather than playing games. We’ve got five friendlies, starting against Crystal Palace next Wednesday, and I’m hopeful that we might be able to announce one more prestigious home game in the next few days, and that’s about what we wanted.’’

As regards personnel, Paul says there is one late change to his squad for the coming season. ‘’Steve Perkins has had a promotion at work and is now head of a department, and feels he can’t commit to us sufficiently, so he won’t be with us next season but I’m in talks at the moment with a well-known centre back who was playing Conference football last season, which was an opportunity that arose at about the same time that Steve was telling us he wouldn’t be able to take part, so that will hopefully develop over the pre-season. We’re also having a look at Tom Dunford, who’s a 19-year-old who’s just been released by Southampton and was recommended to me by Alan Pardew, so he's going to train with us. We were four short at the first session – Richard Jolly’s on holiday, Steve Watts is taking part in a poker tournament in Las Vegas until next week, Karim El-Salahi’s away on business and Tom Davis is on his honeymoon, but they’re all due back by next week.’’

Paul said that he is again hoping to have a meeting with the supporters before the season starts. ‘’Bruce and I, as well as Alan Payne, would like to have a question and answer evening before the season starts, and I’ll be happy to answer any questions that supporters have got. Hopefully we’ll be able to finalise arrangements shortly.’’