Neil Harris admits it will take some time to see if his pre-season business at Gillingham has worked out well.

The manager has made 11 signings over the summer - with four more being worked on - ahead of their return to the bottom tier of the Football League.

Harris said: “The time to assess pre-season is in about 10 games’ time, whether we have got recruitment right or not.

“We hope we have got it right, that might sound strange to hope, but you take the players for the right reasons and you hope you get more right than wrong.

“You can’t judge the team, or the group, until probably 10-12 games in. I see some things already that I really like and some things that I don’t like.

“It has been the toughest pre-season I have had as a manager - this has been my eighth one - because we have had to recruit so many players while trying to manage the players that we have got and making sure we are bedding in ideas and making sure the minutes in the players’ legs is correct at the right times. It has been extremely challenging.

“We have still got players to recruit and so it is not going to go away in the next week or two, but it has been enjoyable.

“We have been building a football club from scratch, almost, with staffing and structure and everything. It has been an enjoyable period.

“It was nice to win on Saturday [at Southend] for the players and nice for the players to respond after a really poor first 20 minutes, to manage a game like we did and, once we got the goal, we could have got another four or five comfortably.

“Positive? Yes, definitely, going into the start of the season.

“We had six players stay from last year, we’ve brought 11 in and we have four more to do, three outfield. We still have work to do.

“It has been an enjoyable challenge for me and it has been nice when you see some good play rewarded with a goal and a clean sheet and a win [on Saturday].”