Quality priority over quantity
ROBBIE Stockdale will prioritise quality over quantity as he assembles his Rochdale squad this summer.
The Dale boss revealed player numbers will most likely be down on last season, offering opportunities to the club’s talented pool of youngsters, including the likes of Jordan Scanlon.
“Jordan will come back in to us, as will other youth team players, because we’ll be down on numbers I’m sure by the start of the season,” he said. “It’s a funny one, because we start back before contracts expire pre-season-wise, so that will take little bit of planning, but they will get their opportunities.
“I plan to run with a smaller squad than we did last season because I want more quality rather than quantity, so those young players will get opportunities and then it’s down to them.”
And Stockdale is hoping to be less reliant on the loan market for the 2022/23 campaign.
Last summer he arrived at the club with pre-season under way and most rival clubs having already established the bulk of their playing personnel.
Stockdale, working against a backdrop of uncertainty over the ownership of the club and with an even tighter budget than usual even by Dale standards, had to work quickly to assemble a squad.
“Obviously we did our loans early last year and I think everybody knows the reason for that,” he said. “My plan – and I hope e it goes to plan – is to run with the permanents to start with.
“It’s very rare that you get loan players at the start of pre-season training anyway because they are needed by their parent clubs to cover.
“We will utilise the loan market, I think it’s really important that we do, but probably not to the extent we did this year.
“I don’t want to get into a situation where we’re changing ten players every transfer window, it’s just not possible. I feel like I’ve had two teams here already.
“So the plan is to try to get some permanents in place, on the back of that we’ll look what’s available in the loan market because there’s always a surprise, and we’ll take it from there.
“I am still in contact with those clubs who would loan us players, but until they get their own squads back for pre-season training you won’t exactly know who’s available.”