It's all change at the Brandywell - Derry City set their sights on the Irish League for next season

Derry City will adopt a more part time approach in their training next season in a bid to attract more Irish League players to the club.

As well as a more stringent transfer policy at the club, Chairman Philip O’Doherty has implemented further changes at the club in response to the difficulty in signing southern based players and to a year of multiple comings and goings amongst the playing staff at the Brandywell.

Since the end of last season, manager Kenny Shiels has signed a total of 18 players, five of whom have only recently arrived at the Brandywell, an upheaval which has arguably had an effect on City’s inconsistent results, particularly in recent months, with 11 defeats in 16 league games.

Chairman O’Doherty admitted that the risk of signing players from outside the League of Ireland has not worked this year, resulting in the new approach which will be implemented next season.

“To try and get players from Dublin, given the rate of exchange between Euro and sterling, we have to pay players a lot of sterling pounds to match what they’re getting in Dublin,” he said.

“To attract those players we would have to break the bank and even if that, there are five or six clubs in Dublin who have a bigger budget than us, so it’s extremely difficult to attract players.

“We’re bringing in players from Scotland and some are working out, some are not, but either way you have to pay a lot to bring them in. Maybe the catchment area in Derry and Donegal we have isn’t large enough.

“Myself and Sean Barret have talked to Kenny because we want to attract more players from the North. We want a bit of flexibility on night time training as opposed to everybody being full time. We want them to be flexible and Kenny has agreed to do that so hopefully we will attract players from Irish League clubs, and there’s no reason why we can’t. Kenny is conscious that if we can’t attract players from the Dublin area than we’re have to look more locally, not making it a 100% full time type squad which we have at the minute.”