AFC Fylde boss Dave Challinor could field more new faces against Nantwich Town this afternoon as he continues to build his squad for the new season.

Fylde are midway through their pre-season preparations and impressed in a narrow defeat to League One side Rochdale on Tuesday night.   

The Coasters are now just three weeks away from the start of the new National League North campaign and Challinor is keen to add at least four more names to his squad.

Challinor said: “It is very likely that there will be a few new faces on show this afternoon. We have had quite a few trialists in this week and we will continue to do so until we right the right players.

“We are still at least four players short of where we want to be so we don’t take too much notice of results just yet. We have also had a couple of injuries which haven’t helped.

“Ultimately this is just another game for us. We need to make a decision upon what kind of team we put out because we have a few little niggles as you would expect and we won’t risk anyone carrying an injury.

“It doesn’t really matter who we are playing, it’s just another chance to get minutes in legs.

Challinor admits it has been difficult to do much specific work in training as his squad is still up in the air.

“We haven’t done too much work around attack and defence just yet, it has been more general fitness work in pre-season up to now. We still need to get our squad sorted out before we can really start specific training work. Hopefully that will develop further over the next couple of weeks.

“As we get towards the end of the month we will start working on areas that are going to be important come the start of the season.

“We have worked the lads very hard, trained every day and played games on top of that.

“The lads will have taken a lot for the game on Tuesday against Rochdale because the game was played at high tempo and it was difficult for us.

“We have to make sure that even though we are playing a team from a lower division that we keep the tempo up to the same standard and maintain our fitness. There are lads here that are trying to earn contracts and they need to keep working hard to impress.

Challinor is hoping to call upon two of his established midfielders for the first time for the trip to The Weaver Stadium, but could be missing a couple of other key names.

“Hopefully Richie (Baker) and Andy (Bond) should be okay – they should play some part after recovering from injury. It will be really good to see them feature for the first time and get some game time. It will be a boost to have two more players back to full fitness and have them ready for the start of August. 

“Steve Williams has got a little bit of a calf problem and Sam Finley missed training on Thursday with a hamstring niggle but he trained yesterday and we will have to see how they both are before we make a decision.”