NEIL Young saluted another high-octane Altrincham performance on Tuesday night but revealed he still wanted "one, if not two" new faces in his line-up for the start of the season.

Alty matched a full-strength Crewe Alexandra team stride for stride and claimed a deserved 1-1 draw with a powerful headed equaliser from impressive summer signing John Cyrus in an entertaining friendly at The J.Davidson Stadium.

But Young insisted there was still work to be done behind the scenes before the National League North campaign kicks off at home to Darlington a week on Saturday.

"The work-rate of the players has been phenomenal, and I couldn’t have asked any more of them," said the Alty boss. "But I feel we are still short in one or two areas for the start of the season, and I would like to think we will get at least one, if not two, in before the first game.

"We are talking to league clubs all the time about loans, and I don’t mind going down that route, because you usually find you are getting lads who are training every day and are fit and ready to go.

"I’m very happy with what we’ve done so far, but it may be that two or three lads will probably have to go out on loan to learn their trade a bit.

"It could be for one month or three months, but, either way, it should benefit them. It’s no good having kids sitting on the bench here, not playing football."

The visit of Burnley to The J.Davidson Stadium tomorrow night (Friday) was supposed to be Alty’s final warm-up game, but they’ve now added another, against a Witton Albion X1 at Alsager on Monday, kicking off at 7.15pm.

"The idea is to give the lads who haven’t played much so far some game time," added Young. "We will still be training on Tuesday and Thursday, as normal. All the focus then will be on the opening game against Darlington, and I’ve got a good idea of what the starting XI will be for that."