Dave Challinor delivers verdict on his Hartlepool United squad as he eyes more signings

The Pools boss insists he won’t bring players in just for the sake of it but he’s targeting two or three more to bring his squad up to the preferred number of around 20 players to work with this season.

Challinor knows Pools will have to be flexible though given the demanding National League fixture list, which is set to be released on Tuesday, given the season will start on October 3, around two months later than normal with a lot of midweek matches to squeeze in.

Challinor told the Mail: “The squad is taking shape, there’s still some more to bring in and round that off and the thought will be around the 20 mark as I’ve said.

"Again, depending on how many young lads we’ll include in that, I don’t envisage it will be a whole lot higher than that but we’ll see.

"I’m not going to bring players in for the sake of it but we recognise that the first part of the season is going to be pretty hectic in terms of the number of games and if we have to be a bit reactive and do business during the opening matches then we’ll do that but I’m comfortable at the moment.

"Now the real work starts in terms of embedding the principles we want in 11 v 11 games and into our friendly matches.

"It’s different from a normal year in terms of the games we’ll play.

"We’re stuck with the games we’ve got in that usually pre-season is a chance to bring in some money to the club with some big pre-season games but that’s not available to anyone at the moment because we’re behind closed doors and the EFL season kicks off in the next couple of weeks.

"It’ll be a different pre-season but it’s all about October 3 and getting ready to go for then regardless of who we play against.”

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