YORK City plan to rotate for Saturday’s Isuzu FA Trophy Third Round match with Nantwich Town.

Neal Ardley has confirmed that there will be changes made to his York side for Saturday, with Michael Duckworth, Callum Harriott and Quevin Castro all pushing for starts.

The FA Trophy match comes too soon for Adam Crookes, Levi Andoh and Dipo Akinyemi, but Will Davies, Luke Daley and Olly Green are all available due to not being cup-tied.

“There will be (changes),” Ardley confirmed to the Press.

“I haven’t named a team yet, I’ll do that tomorrow, and we’ve used the week as I always do, I even did it in the FA Cup week, to look at various players in various positions in training.

“That’s the part the lads need to understand, everyday at training is an opportunity to push themselves forward.

“One or two last week didn’t train as well as others, and didn’t start because of it.

“Loan players are eligible, I think the only person cup-tied is George Sykes-Kenworthy, I don’t think Will Davies is but I’ll check on that today.

“I’m pretty sure Will isn’t cup tied, Levi (Andoh) is back but it got a little bit tight last week when coming back from it so he probably won’t quite be ready.

“Michael Duckworth is back, he’s got an opportunity to get minutes as will some of the others who haven’t had much recently.

“Callum Harriott is back in and getting minutes in, minutes into (Quevin) Castro. Being able to put them into a larger squad and getting minutes into them leading into Christmas, we might need more bodies.

“I didn’t want to throw Callum on the bench. If I put people onto the bench who aren’t really ready to even have 20 minutes, then I’m putting myself under pressure because fans might look at the game and go ‘why didn’t you throw him on?’, but they don’t know the story of why you can’t.

“I’m just not putting him on the bench if they aren’t available to play any longer than ten minutes.

“With Callum we are getting his minutes up, he only trained for three days last week before the game so we’ve now built his minutes up and this week he’s hit some good levels.

“The conversation tomorrow will be about how much we can get from him and what the maximum amount of minutes he can have is, it might dictate whether he starts or whether he’s on the bench.

“(Crookes) is back joining in some parts of training, but we haven’t got him up to full speed yet.

“We’ve just said that when you’ve got a hamstring injury, one of the last things you have to achieve is using a GPS trainer and you have to be able to show you can hit your max speed.

“With some players it might be 9.1, with some it might be 8.7 but we will have that recorder and it will be the final piece of the jigsaw.

“Adam’s only up to about 80 per cent at the moment, Dipo is at a slightly lower level, so they have to go through these processes.

“With a bit of luck once we get through this week and into the back end of next week, hopefully we can get him back into full training.”

Ardley also provided an update on defender Kevin Joshua, who returned to the club last month from his loan spell with Macclesfield.

The City boss confirmed that he had been working to find a club for Joshua to join on loan, but the defender had chosen to stay.

Joshua had joined the club in the Summer after a spell in Scotland with Peterhead, but has found game time rare and is yet to make a first-team appearance for the club barring pre-season.

“He came back from Macclesfield and we had a couple of other loans lined up for him, but Kevin chose not to take them up.

“At the moment he is just training and we’ve spoken to his agent and him, because he needs to be out and actively playing.

“Players need to want to go out and play whether if it is Christmas or not, they need to get that experience and Kevin is certainly one of them that we are trying to give game time to.”

Ardley is also pleased with the efforts of midfielder Alex Woodyard after a commanding performance in the Emirates FA Cup 1-0 defeat to Wigan Athletic last Friday, with the York manager keen to bring the best out of Woodyard.

“Woody was excellent on Friday and I’ve said to Woody that when he keeps it simple, breaks the play up, gives the ball and gets the team going forward, that’s when Woody is at his best.

“When Woody tries to slow the game down and have too many touches, that’s when he doesn’t affect the game as much.

“(At AFC) Fylde away him and Greeny (Olly Green) broke the game up and got us set on counter-attacks, they were brilliant.

“That’s when Woody is at his best, and if he carries on playing like that then he plays a big role in the team.”