WITH City's first friendly of the pre-season out of the way, the squad is now focussing on travelling to Sweden.

After an 8-1 win against Gorleston, the game at Emerald park gave fans the chance to view the players as they prepare to go abroad for the two swedish games. With only two summer signings appearing on the pitch at Gorleston, Glenn Roeder told press he was positive that new signings were not far away. "I'm confident. I think it will be a busy couple of days and then it will continue to be a busy time right up to the last week before we go to Coventry.

"It has been very slow going I have to say, some of the transfers which will happen in the next week or so have been on going for five or six weeks. It's quite ridiculous really, but it's the nature of the business now."

On adding more players to his team, Glenn said: "I want them in for pre-season. We've got a new fitness regime, a new way of getting the players fit. The players are responding well to that and players that I'm bringing in I don't want at their current clubs any longer than they have to be, because I want them to work to our regime of physical fitness."

Several youngsters were displayed on the pitch at Emerald Park, including Luke Daley, Danny Kelly and Tom Adeyemi. Asked if any of these names would be accompanying City to Sweden, Roeder commented, "Not many, no. I took a few to Devon last week, they aquitted themselves well. But none of them are anywhere close to being in the first team at the moment and I wouldn't think that you'll see any of them perhaps at all this year."

With the visiting team to Gorleston missing appearances from the likes of Jamie Cureton and Adam Drury, Roeder was asked whether these players would be ready for the friendlies in Sweden. The City boss said: "They are obviously coming with us, they need to play football as we've not overdone how many games we're playing pre-season, and that's something I decided.

"I knew that it was highly unlikely that we'd have a full compliment of players around this time and it would be too much to ask such a small squad of players to play too many games in a short space of time.

"Had I been confident of having seven or eight more new players in we would have had one or two more friendlies. But I got the amount I wanted knowing where I thought I would be at this time, which is still five or six players short of a full squad."

Roeder made it clear that all thoughts were channelled towards the fast approaching Swedish games, and spoke of what he wanted his players to gain from it.

"Match practise, which is of course very important and fitness. I want to win at tiddlywinks and snap, but we're not playing for points.

"I think there will be between 18 and 20 players going. It's about them all getting minutes on the pitch. It's important that all the squad get roughly the same amount of time of match practise."