York City looking to add "two or three" new faces in January

The Minstermen chief has also revealed that he expects more outgoings than incomings at Bootham Crescent in the next month, whilst adding that the club had turned down a small bid from Norwich City for 17-year-old midfielder Ben Godfrey.

No signings are set to be made before Saturday's Sky Bet League Two clash at bottom-of-the-table Yeovil, but McNamara wants to have fresh faces in place during the fortnight-break without a fixture following the Huish Park trip.

He said: "I think we'll be trying to trim the squad down rather than bringing too many players in but, ideally, I would like two or three new faces. There's a lot of work being done and still a lot to be done on that front, but we will turn our attention to that after the Yeovil game.

"We've got to focus on getting three points there first, then we've got two weeks to prepare for the next game and we can get some stuff done during that time."

On the decision to knock back Norwich's offer for Godfrey, who has turned down two chances to sign professional terms with the Minstermen, McNamara added: "Norwich made a bid that the chairman has rejected and I explained that to Ben because I believe in being open and honest.

"We're not working against him and the last thing the club would ever want to do is stand in the way of any player's progress, but the offer wasn't enough for the club or chairman to even think about."

The City boss is still waiting for approaches to be made for members of his squad that he would be willing to offload, such as out-of-favour duo John McCombe and Marvin McCoy, saying: "I've not heard anything yet, but things might start happening after the window opens."

McNamara is also delaying any decisions on the retention of the club's five loan players - Will Boyle, Bradley Fewster, Stefan O'Connor, Kenny McEvoy and Mark Kitching - until after the Yeovil game, reasoning: "It's important we get the loan players sorted and we should be in a stronger position to do that after the game.

"We need to check the players and their clubs are happy for them to be here and, most importantly, that we want to keep them."

It had been understood that O'Connor had returned to Arsenal due to a hamstring problem, but he is now set to feature in Somerset having made a swifter recovery than expected and with Eddie Nolan ruled out due to a thigh injury.

While Yeovil will climb above third-bottom City with a win in this weekend's fixture, meanwhile, McNamara is setting his sights upwards, grouping the match with the next game at home to Newport a fortnight later.

The Welsh club are just four points ahead of the Minstermen and have played a game more, with McNamara reasoning: "The next two games are crucial for us and I'm looking at the teams ahead of us rather than below us.

"We want to win at Yeovil but there's no catastrophes at this stage - halfway through the season - and we've got Newport coming up as well and I want to get above them. I don't think there's only five or six clubs in trouble either.

"There are so many more teams that can be caught as soon as we go on a run and I'm sure we can do that."

The former Celtic skipper is also in no mood to make a big fuss about any disruption to his team's plans, caused by York's flood crisis, declaring: "It's not been ideal, but I won't be crying about it.

"So many people have had a lot of problems and, for us, it's just meant changing our training to synthetic pitches, which we'd been doing a lot of the time before the floods anyway. We've had great facilities at the University's Sport Village, although we just have to be careful with one or two players who have had previous problems with their knees and ankles.

"We can't train there on New Year's Day because it's closed but we got the begging bowl out and Birmingham City are letting us use their facilities on the way down to Yeovil. Everybody has seen over the last week the problems the city has been facing and we're thankful to them."