BOSS Mark Yates is looking to bolster his squad up to around 19 players for the new Blue Square Premier season.

Harriers' 12 contracted players reported back last week for pre-season training, along with a strong crop of trialists.

Speaking to the official website, Manager Yates admitted that, budget depending, he's pitching for between 18 and 20 bodies to launch an assault on the 2008-09 BSP.

The remaining players are set to come from the selection of trialists spending at least the first part of pre-season with the club, as well as other targets Yates and Neil Howarth are speaking to.

"I'm looking to have something between 18 and 20, depending on what the budget allows," commented Yates.

"19 would be an ideal number for me, of course you'd like more but I'd rather have quality over quantity.

"19 will do; what we want is players to give good competition for places.

"We've got the nucleus of a decent side but we have to add to that with some more quality, we know that, and we'll be aiming to do that over the next couple of weeks."

The Aggborough Chief admitted that it's thus far been a slow summer in the game - with only those with large playing budgets close to completing their squads.

Yates went on to say that he would have preferred to have been settled with a squad by this stage in the summer, but confessed that it's still a case of playing the waiting game as he finds the right players to join his Aggborough complement.

"Ideally you'd like to be done by now but for one or two reasons we just haven't been able to do that yet," he continued.

"There are still a lot of good players out there but things are fairly quiet.

"We're still looking at a few decent players and we're hopeful of bringing in the best we possibly can."