Head of Player Recruitment Lloyd Kerry has revealed the club’s young professionals will be given the opportunity to impress before decisions are made on a transfer front.
With our second pre-season match taking place this weekend, Kerry believes these matches are a key opportunity to stake their claim for a place.
“We will always look in-house as a priority at this club. We have a group of young pros who have just made the step up and they’ll be desperate to show the manager what they can do. Pre-season gives them all an opportunity to stake their claim for a place and they have been great so far.
“It’ll probably be a case that we reassess things towards the end of pre-season and seeing where we are at. The good thing is that we have until the end of August to review and assess if we need to add anything more to the squad.”
With eight new faces added to the squad, Kerry believes the club is in a strong position when looking to complete further deals.
“We have signed eight players so far this window as we looked to conduct our business early. We are really pleased with the calibre of players we have brought to the club and the strength we have moving forward.
“With the players we have in the building, I think it puts us into a good position when we are trying to attract new players. They can see the group we have here and hopefully that can be a positive influence on the recruitment side.”
However, Town’s Recruitment Chief has insisted that the club is not standing still despite the early progress.
“If you look across the squad just now there is a lot of good competition for places. However, we aren’t standing still, we are continuing to plan in case there is an injury, a loss of form or anything like that.
“If something like that does happen then we have a list of players which we can move on quickly.”
With a new season fast approaching, Kerry has not ruled out the possibility of using the loan market which has brought high levels of success in recent years.
“Of course it’s an option to us, we have good success over the years in that market and we have a list of players who we would like to bring in on loan. However, that all depends on if they are available.
“Looking at last year, we were right up there for minutes played by loan players. I think that puts us in a good position when we are looking to bring someone in.”