Morecambe’s manager looks ahead to their final pre-season friendly on Saturday.

Adam Lakeland believes Morecambe’s final two-pre-season friendlies will have been ideal preparation for the new National League North campaign.

The Shrimps’ final summer workout sees them welcome Barrow AFC to the Halo Aerospace Stadium on Saturday, having drawn with AFC Fylde on Tuesday.

It is a match which the Morecambe manager is looking forward to, coming up against a Barrow team who dropped into the National League for this season after relegation from League Two.

Speaking on Tuesday, Lakeland said: “Another good team, good manager (Adam Murray), a team that have come down and I’m guessing they’ll be wanting to return immediately to the EFL.

“It’s going to be another really good test and challenge for us, probably a slightly different style to the one we’ve faced today - which is another good test for the players.

“You want to play as many hard games in pre-season as you can. With us coming in at the stage we did, a lot of the pre-season schedule was already sorted but with us being able to get this game tonight and Barrow on Saturday, it just means we can finish our pre-season off with two really solid tests against higher league opposition.

“I feel, in the main, we’ve fared quite well tonight. Hopefully we’ll do the same on Saturday and then the bulk of the pre-season work is over and we all turn our attention to that first game of the season.”

Tuesday’s game was also a first appearance of the summer for Will Smith, Lakeland’s first signing for the Shrimps last month.

The defender played 45 minutes before being replaced by Liam Hogan and, with Lewis Baines another option to call upon, Lakeland believes that trio will not be bettered anywhere in the NLN this season.

“He’s been so frustrated,” Lakeland said of Smith.

“He picked up a little niggle just before coming back into pre-season; probably doing too much, wanting to come in here and hit the ground running.

“He just struggled a little bit at the start of pre-season, so we’ve had to be a little bit cautious with him.

“He may have been able to get some minutes at Bury but we didn’t really want to put him in on a 3G pitch.

“We just gave it that extra couple of days and he’s coasted through 45 minutes there, which is great for us.

“I’ve said before, with Will Smith, Liam Hogan and Lewis Baines, I think we’ve got the three best centre-halves in the division.

“If we decide to go with a back four, we can play two top centre-halves from the three but we’ve now got that ability to play all three of them and that gives us great options.”