Lee Bowyer sat down with cafc.co.uk for an in-depth interview during the club’s pre-season camp in Spain.
You can watch the interview, in full, for free below.
On the work that needs to be done…
"We’ll be ready come the first game of the season for sure. We need to bring players in, we know that, we’re not stupid. I’d probably put a rough number of six to seven players that we still need to bring in. We’ll probably bring in maybe two or three more permanents and then probably four loans.
"We’re constantly tracking players, every single hour of the day. In between sessions here [at the club’s pre-season training camp] we’re then going to the room watching players. Could he improve us? Would he suit us? Because we want healthy competition for every position. What we’re trying to achieve is to have two players for every position. We play two up top, so we’ll be looking to have four strikers. Chuks is a number 10, so he’s a midfielder, so at the moment we have Lyle and Macauley. We’ll be looking to bring in a minimum one but hopefully two more strikers. We know Chuks can adapt but that’s not why we brought Chuks in, we brought Chuks in to score goals from the middle of the park and to provide because he’s very good at assists as well."
On how he is approaching loan signings…
"The better players don’t go out [on loan] straight away. The bigger clubs try and get the best club that will suit their player. We have to be patient just like we were last year when we got Josh Cullen and Krystian Bielik late on and they definitely made us better. We have to be patient again. I have no doubt we will make the right choices which are best for our club and the way that we play."
On the importance of experience…
"We’ve got a lot of young players here, so we’re going to need to bring in two or three experienced ones. Darren Pratley was priceless at the end of last season. You can’t understand what he’s like off the pitch with the young lads, encouraging them and teaching them right from wrong. You need those men in your dressing room."
On signing a new contract with the club this summer…
"I said from the beginning I wanted to stay. I think everybody knows that I’m a laid back person and I say it how it is. For me everybody seemed to be more worried about what was going to happen than I was. I believed from the beginning that we were going to agree and obviously negotiations, it is what it is. The club want to get you for as cheap as possible and I wanted to be paid fairly for what myself and the team had done.
"We’ve come to a fair agreement and I’m happy, the owner is happy. We’ve got a good group here. The owner said: ‘We have to keep this group together’. So I’m happy with that. I’m over the moon, he’s backed us in the market already, we’ve spent a bit of money, which for someone who wants to sell the club is good to see. For me, it shows that he does care and he wants to do the right thing. Is he going to spend millions? No but if he thinks that it’s going to be good and an asset for the club, then he’s supported us and I believe that he’ll keep doing that. he did last season, OK we didn’t spend any money but he backed us on the players we wanted to bring in. He’s giving players that are here now new contracts, the ones we are looking to tie down, so for me it’s all good."
