“We have to give up every hour to get players in,” he said.
“Hopefully I am going to be meet the new guys again, or at least one or two of them, on Tuesday.
“We haven’t got bundles of money. I know they are going to try to increase the budget and help, but a lot of it is already used up.
“If we had a clear summer, I would have said the squad needed an overhaul.
“That’s not going to be easy in a week leading up to the season, but we certainly need to man-up as a team.
“Hopefully other people can see that we are really short.
“The boys have worked hard through pre-season.
“In the last six years when I’ve done pre-season we arrange the big games such as Ipswich and then we have the games that are a bit more physical.
“In both the games against Alfreton and York we struggled and that’s what we struggled with last year.
“It shows us where we are short. We don’t need to be a fitter team as the boys have worked hard on that side, but we need to be a more manly team to be able to cope with the league.
“The reason we got relegated last year is because we were not strong enough for the league.”