Ebbsfleet United are pleased to announce the appointment of Harry Watling as the club’s manager ahead of our home match against Hartlepool United on Saturday.
Watling, 34, has most recent experience as first-team coach in the Scottish Premier League with Glasgow Rangers and before that he was first-team coach at Championship side QPR.
Prior to those high-profile roles at the top end of the Scottish and English games, the new Fleet boss was head coach at USL Championship side Hartford Athletic, spending 18 months from January 2021 in the United States where he broke several records including most goals scored and most clean sheets in his first season.
He was one of the youngest coaches in England to achieve UEFA A, B and Pro licences having started out as an Academy coach for Chelsea aged 20. He spent more than five years at Stamford Bridge before embarking on similar roles at Millwall and West Ham United where he was academy head coach from 2018 to 2021.
Alongside Watling in the Fleet dugout will be assistant manager David Kerslake and first-team coach John Cotton.
Kerslake has wide-ranging experience as both a player in the Premier League and a successful coach and assistant manager working with well-known managers at all levels. As a full-back, he played for QPR and Swindon Town and was part of the Robins team that achieved promotion to the Premier League under Glenn Hoddle in 1993. He then spent four years at White Hart Lane with Tottenham Hotspur. As assistant manager he has achieved promotion with Northampton Town and Nottingham Forest while also serving impressive spells at Watford, Cardiff City, Gillingham, Lincoln City and most recently Blackpool in a long and successful career.
John Cotton joins following his time with Charlton Athletic’s academy, most notably the U16s.
New Fleet boss Watling said on his appointment “I’m delighted to be here. It’s a brilliant setup at Ebbsfleet and it was really important to align myself with a club that allows me to play football on the front foot and the way I want to play it. I want to develop people here, and what I saw on the pitch on Tuesday night, I loved the commitment, the honesty and work rate, and the quality on show. It was a marker for the bare minimum I want to see and now myself, David and John can’t wait to get started in front of the Fleet fans on home soil against Hartlepool on Saturday.”
Fleet CEO Damian Irvine added, “We are very strong on getting the right characters into this football club through rigorous processes, people who are devoted to the job, to the club and to their desire to succeed. Harry is one of those. The footballing world is a small one – players and coaches will know who commands respect and who is capable of leading and delivering results. With a new up-and-coming manager in Harry assisted by someone as hugely respected, experienced and successful in the industry as David Kerslake, our new management team will be getting to work immediately to deliver those results.
“We went through a process back in January for a new manager and so it hasn’t been a process we’ve had to start again from scratch when it came to do so this time. We’ve done our due diligence, we’ve done our groundwork and our planning and we’ve been able to move quickly to secure the right people with the right credentials who are very highly regarded in football coaching circles to take this club forward.”
• Hear from our new coaching staff in their first interviews to follow shortly.
