STEPHEN BRADLEY HAS been on quite the recruitment drive since being handed the Shamrock Rovers job on a permanent basis.
Ireland U19 striker Michael O’Connor arrived last month following the captures of Ronan Finn, Darren Meenan, Kevin Horgan, Tomer Chencinski, Dave McAllister, Ryan Connolly, Paul Corry, Daniel Devine and Roberto Lopes — bringing the total of close-season signings into double figures.
While the Hoops boss says he is happy with how his squad is shaping up ahead of the new campaign after recently returning from a warm weather training camp in Spain, he admitted that there could be one more addition in the coming weeks.
The 32-year-old, who is set to embark on his first full season in senior management, also revealed yesterday that he had received advice on what to look for in potential players from two former mentors — Michael O’Neill and Arsene Wenger.
“When I spoke to Michael O’Neill and the boss at Arsenal that was the number one thing they said to me about characters: Take a player with less ability and more character over the others,” Bradley said yesterday.
“It was number one for me when I sat down with (Rovers director of football) Stephen McPhail and said ‘how are we going to recruit?’.
“We identified where we were really weak and where we wanted to strengthen. Then when we looked at those positions, what we wanted out of the people in those positions and character was one of the big things that jumped out at us.
Most of the people we signed have been captains at other clubs. It’s something we haven’t had on the pitch and now we have five or six who are leaders. Straight away, that takes us to another level.”
Bradley knows Wenger well, having come through the ranks at Arsenal and captained their reserves without ever breaking into the first team. He is also the Gunners’ chief scout in Ireland under Steve Rowley.
The former midfielder played under current Northern Ireland boss O’Neill during his spell with Rovers and won the Premier Division in 2010. The pair have remained close and are regularly in contact.
Bradley added: “I would have spoken to my boss Steve Rowley and a little bit to the manager just for advice at the start when I was offered the job. Should I take it? Both Arsene and Michael.
“I speak to Michael regularly. He’s been brilliant in terms of his advice and comments on where he thinks we are and the players we’ve signed. He gives me a bit of shit over one or two of them but that’s Michael.
“He’s been really good and character was definitely the big thing for him. I asked him what he thought when he walked into the Rovers dressing room and why he signed me, why he signed other players and his big thing was characters that could come here and play.
“You know when they’re not in the team that they’re still going to be with you. With me, he knew I wasn’t going to play every game but that I’d do my business right and be good around the dressing room.
“He said that’s more important than having a good player who is going to whinge and moan every time he’s left out. It was good advice and something that stuck in my mind when I was doing my recruiting.”
The Tallaght club, who finished fourth in the SSE Airtricity League Premier Division last year, have an extremely tough opening fixture on 24 February as they head to Oriel Park to face three-in-a-row champions Dundalk.
But Bradley is relishing the test.
“I think it’s great we’re playing them so early because they’re the benchmark,” he says. “They’re at the level we all want to get to. There’s no getting away from that. They’ve been the best team for the last three years and they are still the best team in my opinion.
“It will give us a good indication of where we are. I think I know where we are and that will confirm where we are and how far we are away from them.
“We have to concentrate on ourselves and keep working hard to catch them over a period of time. It’s not going to happen in three months or in one season, it’s going to take time. They’ve built that squad over three or four years and they deserve all the respect in the world.”
The Lilywhites will again be the team to catch despite losing Daryl Horgan and Andy Boyle to Preston North End, but Rovers’ aim is put a realistic title challenge together by being hard to beat.
“I think we’re close to them (Dundalk),” Bradley added. “If you look at our squad with the personnel and the characters we have, I don’t think we’re a million miles away but to say that we will overtake them and win the league next year would be silly.
“They’ve had that time together and they know what it takes to win together and that counts for an awful lot in tight games when you’re 1-0 down and you come back to win 2-1. They’ve done that a lot and that counts — that mindset and that mentality that we won’t get beaten.
That’s something we need to get into this new squad and we will because I know we have the personnel and the characters to do that but it won’t happen overnight or in one season. We’re not foolish and we know it will take time.”
While he accepts the club are a work in progress, the Hoops head coach doesn’t see any reason why they can’t close the gap and push Cork City for second place.
“We finished 22 points behind them (Dundalk) last year and that’s not good enough. So that needs to be reduced dramatically and we need to be really competitive, not just fall away.
“But again, it’s going to be tough. They finished with 70-something points last year and that was some total. Cork, to be fair, will feel hard done by as they had a great season and didn’t win the league. It’s going to be tough but we can’t finish 24 or 25 points behind them. That’s not acceptable.
“I don’t think there’s much between the rest — I really don’t. I think Dundalk are the best team and there’s no getting away from that. They are there to be shot at and we will catch them eventually but there’s not much between the rest of us.”
Shamrock Rovers manager Stephen Bradley was on hand to help make yesterday’s announcement of eir Sport’s exclusively live coverage of the mouth-watering clash between champions Dundalk and Shamrock Rovers in the opening weekend of the 2017 SSE Airtricity League. Coverage of the big clash gets underway live on eir Sport at 7.15pm on Friday, 24 February
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