AFC Fylde bosses agree on squad for next season but new signings must wait

But owner David Haythornthwaite warned supporters not to hold their breath for new signings, and he fears up to 1,500 players could be left without a club this summer as all the uncertainty in football sees the transfer market collapse.

Speaking in his latest video interview for the club website, chairman Haythornthwaite revealed a ‘retained list’ was agreed with manager Jim Bentley and chief executive Jonty Castle before they joined almost the entire Mill Farm workforce on furlough.

Haythornthwaite said: “Jim, Jonty and I decided on (a squad) that will be the nucleus of our team ready for when we hopefully start playing football again.

“There are negotiations to be had with certain players because we have quite a few who will be out of contract and quite a few we have options on. Jim and Jonty have pretty clear views and share them with me, and my job – unless I vehemently disagree – is to support them.

“Final decisions haven’t been made but the ink is definitely drying on the list of who will be retained and who won’t.

“The players we have decided on will play for us whichever division we are in. They didn’t join Fylde to go down – they joined Fylde to go up – but the squad we will keep is more than capable of bouncing back straight away.

“But I’m still reasonably confident that sense and fairness will prevail and Fylde will not be relegated in these circumstances. We’re concentrating on us being in the National League again.”

The chairman wished to address fans’ concerns over summer recruitment after cutting back on his funding of the club to focus on surviving the coronavirus crisis.

He explained: “We have cut our costs to the bone and almost everybody is furloughed. The contribution I’m having to make is about 50 per cent of what it was and that is just about managing to cover costs.

“Going into the season, you are definitely not going to see anybody signing anyone. We won’t be signing anyone on July 1. It’s just not going to happen because we don’t know when we are going to play. Why would we cripple ourselves with more debt and payments?

“We can’t afford to pay the players we’ve got. We have an obligation to them, so why bring in more players to add to that debt and have less money to give to everybody?

“I think all of a sudden you will find 1,400-1,500 players who will have no club.”