We can’t afford more new faces
MACCLESFIELD Town manager John Askey is once again adamant that the club has no money left for any potential signings.
The Silkmen have a small squad at the moment, with just 15 players currently on deals at the Moss Rose.
Askey knows he needs to bring in some more players, but concedes that it won’t be happening under the current circumstances.
“We have no more money. I keep saying that and people don’t seem to realise it. There is no more money,” he said.
“The club have 15 players signed up but we desperately need more players in. Hopefully someone might come forward and give us a bit of extra cash but that isn’t the case yet.
“We have the trialists here as well and they have impressed me, particularly Danny Whitehead. Whether we can do anything though, I don’t know.”
Macclesfield picked up their first victory of pre- season on Friday when they defeated Stockport County 2-1 at home.
While fitness is the obvious priority, Askey admits it is nice to finally have the winning mentality back in his squad.
“It’s important that you win in pre-season as that will hopefully give the players confidence,” he said.
“There is nothing worse than when you keep los- ing as the team might be thinking they aren’t good enough to win, but now they know that they are.
“I was happy with the performance against Stockport and I thought we dominated the match for long periods.
“In the last 20 minutes we were a bit tired but that’s to be expected when we have such a small squad and we’re having to play people for longer than what we wanted.
“Defensively I’m still not 100 per cent happy with some of the defending towards the end of the game, but these things can easily be rectified.
“Hopefully we will keep improving over the coming weeks and then come the opening league match against Torquay we will know where we are.”
Macclesfield’s win over Stockport came a few days after the Silkmen’s narrow 1-0 loss to League One side Bury, and Askey was happy with what he saw from his players in that game too.
“We’ve been working on things and it showed against Bury. Apart from their goal I think our two goalkeepers only made about one save between them, it was a really positive performance,” he said.
“The team are coping well, we matched both Bury and Rochdale, and against Bury in particular we got stronger as the game went on.
“They managed to change virtually their whole team while we had a couple of injuries within our squad but our lads kept battling on throughout the match.”