Dave Challinor discusses four Hartlepool United trialists as he highlights 'obvious' areas to strengthen following friendlies at Morpeth Town and Blyth Spartans

Pools beat Morpeth Town 5-1 on Friday evening before playing out a 2-2 draw at Blyth Spartans the following day.

At Morpeth, Daniel Boateng Edwin Mensah, Jordan Mustoe and Scott McLean all started on trial and were utilised in defensive areas. Despite a couple of solid performances, none of the four players immediately stood out to the Pools boss.

Boateng lasted just 45-minutes at Morpeth and didn’t play the following day at Blyth while Mustoe had to quickly withdraw himself as an injury precaution shortly after coming on at Blyth.

On the trialists, Challinor told The Mail: “It’s always difficult, there are different things that come from it.

"Our squad is tight but it’s got quality in it and you’ve got to stand out and that can be difficult, especially with pre-season games.

"What we won’t do, is we’ll not play games for the sake of it and we’ll always play with intensity. But there are openings in the squad and we still need to add bodies so they have opportunities and they’ve got to make sure they do everything they can to take those opportunities which is a difficult ask.

"But if they’re not successful here, they’ve got to learn from it and use it to take them forward and earn something elsewhere.”

As it stands, Pools have just four recognised senior defenders signed up for the coming season in David Ferguson, Gary Liddle, Timi Odusina and Aaron Cunningham.

And Challinor knows it’s an obvious area that needs strengthening in the coming weeks.

“We’ll look at where we’re at,” he added. “We’re getting closer to the start now and it’s pretty obvious that we need to get bodies in the building defensively.

"They need to be bodies that compete to start matches for us, we need a centre-back, we need a full-back and we need a player who can fill defensive positions for us.

"We’ve got options for loans which with the EFL kicking off over the weekend, we’ll know more in terms of which players are available to loan and clubs will be making decisions.”

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