Fleetwood Town won't sign players for the sake of it

A pressing priority for Barton is to rebuild the defence, having lost all of last season’s first-choice rearguard apart from Danny Andrew.

His current central defensive options are all teenagers; academy graduates James Hill and Harrison Holgate – who impressed in the EFL Trophy win at Carlisle United – and Liverpool loanee Morgan Boyes.

The trio have started one EFL game between them but Barton would rather give them opportunities than make unsuitable signings.

The head coach said: “We still haven’t replaced some of the players who were big for us last season: Lewie Coyle, Lewis Gibson, Harry Souttar, on top of Ash Eastham leaving in January.

“We have to rebuild the defence, which we are all aware of. We are aware we have to put that back together in a better way, which will be difficult because they were good lads who did really well for us.

“But that’s the challenge of League One that I probably wouldn’t get further up the food chain because you don’t have to replace your whole backline every summer.

“We are looking to strengthen (the defence) for sure because we’ve lost seniors in there, but when young players play as well as they did on Tuesday it does take the pressure off.... because if they keep developing, who knows? We were all young players who were once given an opportunity and you have to take it.

“My job is not to panic and to make sure we take the right players. There are a lot of lads out of contract at the minute and I feel I’m constantly saying ‘no, no, no’ to players because I know what we want and how we want to play.

“I’d rather give those opportunities to our younger players than take a player from another club who isn’t what I want long term. I don’t think that’s fair on the player or on our young kids.”

This is also the first summer of the salary cap and Barton feels it may take a couple of transfer windows for the market to adapt to the new restrictions.

He added: “You can’t spend what you want any more and it’s a very strange market at the minute. It doesn’t change things enormously for us but it has adjusted the marketplace.

“But there will probably be some really good value in the market if you can hold your nerve.

“If we have the opportunity to bring one or two in to add to the group we certainly will, but on Tuesday I thought some of our younger lads gave a really good account of themselves against a good League Two side and were very unfortunate not to keep a clean sheet.”

In the versatile Wes Burns, Barton has an experienced player who can slot into the Coyle role.

The head coach added: “He’s such a good player we can use him in a number of roles. I have to look at what position he can push on to the next level from.

“Because of his athleticism, you always want to put him in a position where he can show off his attacking prowess. He has done that at wing-back at right wing and right-back for us.”