WITHAM Town manager Marc Benterman says players will have to buy into the club's philosophy if they want to be part of his squad this season.

Since taking over as Witham boss, Benterman has spent a busy three weeks not only putting the early building blocks of his first squad in place with a number of signings, but has also been meeting people involved behind the scenes at Spa Road.

Having been impressed by the club from the outside, he felt it was important to fully understand what made Spa Road tick now he was on the inside and had wanted to engage with volunteers and fans.

He said it had been an enjoyable, if rather hectic, spell ahead of the start of team pre-season training this week and said players wanting to join would need to understand the club's DNA as well if they had aspirations to be Witham Town players under his managerial guidance.

He said: "I've had a busy three weeks meeting up with as many people at the club as I could, from the chairman to people who man the front gate on match days.

"I think it's important to fully understand the values of the club and I'm really excited to get going.

"Had I stayed at Stansted, it would have been a relatively easy-going three weeks, but I have been working really hard getting to know people.

"You have to buy into the values of a club and I have been speaking with as many people as I could getting to know what the club is about.

"It's been nice to get into training now, but it has been a very good three weeks.

"There are some fantastic people at this club.

"I expect players coming in to buy into what I'm about and that's what the club is about as well."

After his three weeks building behind the scenes, Benterman said he was looking forward to getting to work on the training pitch this week as he and his players ramped up their preparations for the start of the new season in August.

He added: "I wanted to make sure I got a number of signings over the line before we came back for pre-season training and that was a lot of my focus in the first three weeks. "They were all higher-profile players like George Marsh and Scott Kemp and there was more urgency to get them sorted, but there is still a long way to go. "I'm very happy with where we are in terms of squad building.

"All the boys I've signed so far are 23 or under and most live locally, so we are excited and where we want to be.

"We also have between 30 and 40 trialists coming in for us to have a look at this week and we will be looking closely at them all.

"That will obviously be whittled down because we can't entertain them all and we have the club's under-23s to have a look at as well.

"We've got a busy spell coming up and we'll use it well for the benefit of the team and the club.

"We will make sure we are ready for the start of the season."