Lancaster boss Mark Fell is looking to make more signing as he awaits confirmation of start date for new season

Only Brad Carsley and Danny Pilkington have left from last season, while Andy Teague and Tom Kilifin have been enticed back to Giant Axe.

“Everybody has committed,” said Fell. “We have done deals with everybody.

“We probably still need another defender and another forward.

“I certainly do not envisage bringing any more midfield players in. We have got loads of them and they are all very good.

“There is strong competition in our midfield – we’ve got Niall Cowperthwaite, David Norris, Simon Wills, Rob Wilson and Paul Dawson.

“There’s five just off the top of my head who are all going to be competing for potentially three places.

“So we are certainly well stocked up in that position, it’s just the top and bottom of the pitch where we need to do a little bit of work.”

Fell revealed his players are desperate to get back on the pitch and start playing again.

He has predicted that the new 2020/21 season will not get under way until at least September – and thinks City’s first game could very well be a FA Cup game.

“I’m sick of Zoom meetings and making plans – we are just desperate to get going again,” said Fell, who welcomed his men back to pre-season training at the weekend under strict social distancing measures.

“I don’t think the league will start as normal,” said Fell. “I think we are out of time for that. We have to be given seven or eight weeks of preparation time. So if the new season was going to start on August 15 as normal then our full pre-season would have started on Saturday.

“But it didn’t, we just had sight of the players on Saturday. I think it will be a September start and I predict that our first game could be a FA Cup game – it could be the first qualifying round of the competition.

“That would be a really interesting way of doing it and then the league programme could start the week after.

“They could just use last season’s fixtures so our first game could be Stafford Rangers away like it was on the opening day of last season.”