YORK City will freshen up their starting eleven in Saturday’s clash with Dagenham & Redbridge at the LNER Community Stadium (3pm). 

Assistant manager Neil Cox confirmed that York will be making changes to the starting squad that suffered a bleak 1-0 defeat to Dorking Wanderers in midweek, with City facing a potential drop into the Vanarama National League relegation zone, should they lose. 

Cox gave updates on Callum Harriott and Olly Dyson, with the former currently recovering away from the football club, and confirmed that Dan Batty and Danny Amos were in good spirits after picking up recent minutes.

“We’ve got one or two options that we can change if we need to change it, we’ve got a big squad for tomorrow and we’ll make that decision tomorrow,” Cox explained.

“We need to freshen it up, we’re just looking at what positions we need to freshen it up in. 

“That’ll be a decision for the manager in the morning, all the boys know how we want to play and the personnel will be picked tomorrow. 

“We’ve got an idea on the boys that can handle the Saturday’s to Tuesday’s, and we have a couple that can’t and we have to look after those boys really. 

“There’s a couple of experienced boys who are used to playing Saturday to Tuesday so they should have no problems with their bodies, unless they have an injury, so we’ll just keep pushing them. The boys have been brilliant behind-the-scenes.

 “He (Dan Batty) played a little bit longer than we thought but he managed to come through, he is unscathed, which is really good. 

“He’ll get stronger with the more games he plays but we just have to be careful with him, as he’s not played any games in a long time. 

“That was his first game at a good tempo, but he did really well the other night. 

“Danny’s (Amos) not played for two months so we were worried about him, but he knew what he was coming into and Danny is a fit boy anyways.

“He’s been training regularly, not like Batts who has been out for a while, but Danny has come in and we’ll keep pushing him to make sure he is alright. 

“Olly has been ill for a couple of days, so we’re waiting to find out. 

“We’ll find out by Monday if he’s going to extend his loan or not, but he’s been ill so I don’t know what’s going on with that one. 

“Callum’s doing really well, he’s away with a different physio that we know. 

“We’re getting him a bit of time away from the football club really because he’s getting frustrated in his own gym, so we’ve sent him to see another physio to upgrade him and refresh him really.”

Cox also provided a brief update on York’s transfer business, with the club hoping to add a new face into the squad early next week. 

The City assistant provided the criteria that the club are on the lookout for, confirming that talks had been held, but that there had been no progress with conversations ongoing.

“We’re hoping to and we’re trying really hard, we’re still hoping to get one over the line.

“That probably won’t be done until after the weekend, if we can. 

“But until they’re signed and nothing’s been done, we have nothing to report.

“We deal with it everyday, we get people sent through to myself and Tony (McMahon, first-team coach) and we have Matt (Levers, recruitment analyst) in recruitment to help us out with different information. 

“They have to want to come to this football club, which is never easy, and the player themselves have to realise it’s going to be a bit of a battle. 

“Some players are happy with it and some aren’t, some are happy to sit at their club, get paid and not play games. 

“We have to make sure we bring the right character in, and we’re going to do that.”

Cox also briefly addressed online rumours that City were considering bringing players back to the football club from their loans elsewhere, with Maziar Kouhyar one of the rumoured names.

“They are just rumours.”