Farrell: Patience is the key for Sons' transfers

Farrell has been in charge of Dumbarton’s recruitment drive since manager Stevie Aitken went on holiday a fortnight ago and has overseen the signing of six players as well as continuing talks with a number of others.

Andy Graham, Jamie Ewings, Jordan Kirkpatrick and youngsters Mikey Hopkins and Donald McCallum have extended their stay at the Rock. They will join new signings Grant Gallagher, Gregor Buchanan, Kevin Cawley, Darren Miller in next season’s squad.

The latest additions are goalkeeper Mark Brown and former Alloa and Stranraer defender Mark Docherty and Farrell is pleased with Sons’ business so far — but points out that the new management team will bide their time to ensure they get the right players for next season.

He said: “Mark Docherty is one to trust, he was great for me and Stevie at Stranraer, he had a fantastic season. I thought we got the best out of him, he enjoyed working with us and we enjoyed working with him. We trusted him and that goes a long way.

“If you look at it in its entirety we have only had four or five players who were offered deals at Dumbarton prior to us coming in so we are having to build more or less a new squad. The last thing you want to do is jump in like a kid in a sweet shop and take everything at once because there are going to be players that become available later on in the summer who are perhaps waiting on full-time offers.

“It is about trying to be patient and getting the key signings in as quick as you can and speak to others. But the most important thing is to have the squad sorted by July 25 when it starts in earnest.” Farrell expects there to be more arrivals at Dumbarton this week as they await decisions from members of last year’s squad.

Garry Fleming has been offered a deal but has been on holiday, while Scott Taggart has told Farrell he wants to stay at the club but is currently on holiday and so hasn’t signed yet.

Farrell explains: “The talks are still ongoing. We offered Garry a new deal but he has been on holiday so we will speak to him when he is back.” Another deal that Aitken and Farrell have managed to strike is one for a new training facility. Under Ian Murray the Sons’ squad trained at Toryglen twice a week, but only on a quarter pitch for finance and availability reasons.

However one of the new management team’s first priorities was to secure a bigger pitch for training and they have done so — Dumbarton will train and do their pre-season at the home of junior side Benburb, a few hundreds yards from Ibrox Stadium on Glasgow’s South Side.

Farrel said: “We will be training at a brand new facility at Benburb Juniors, which is due to open in a couple of weeks. We will be using that through the course of pre-season and the season ahead, which will be a full size 4G pitch.

“We have used our contacts in terms of it is people we know in the game who has opened that facility and they have been kind enough to give us the use of it.

“It is a fantastic facility, there is somewhere for the players to eat after training. Little things like that to part-time players can sometimes make the difference.”