Boss Austin set to trim Town squad size over the summer

Thanks to heavy recruitment from Justin Edinburgh last summer, and more rebuilding work from Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink in January, the Town squad is a hefty 23-strong going into the new campaign.

On top of that, new offers are also on the table and being considered by Brendan Moloney and Leon Barnett, which, if they accept them, would bump that number up to 25.

And that is already too many for Austin, who is going to want to bring in a few new faces of his own as well.

So it seems another busy summer of transfer activity can be expected at Sixfields, although Austin says he doesn’t ‘need to be stupid’.

“Ideally, the squad for me is 20 outfield players and three goalkeepers,” said Austin, who has signed a two-year deal to succeed Hasselbaink as Town manager. “We have a few more than that at the moment, so we will have to see how that shapes up during pre-season.

“There are some very, very good players here so I don’t feel we need to be stupid and start thinking we need to make loads and loads of changes.

“I feel the amount of changes that have been made over the past two windows are too many to be able to get any continuity for the team to be able to improve and gel and move forward.

“There were a lot of players that came here in January, but some of them were loans and they ended up going back anyway, and then we got our core group back together again.

“I don’t think it was any coincidence that it was that group that then started stringing some results together.”