COMING through this afternoon’s final pre-season friendly at Yeovil Town with his squad intact could be the number one priority for head coach Luke Williams.

With the injury sustained to Raphael Branco on Wednesday night against Swansea and a lack of new recruits, Williams’ squad is still looking a bit thin on the ground.

Town should be boosted by the return of midfielder Conor Thomas to their ranks, after the 22-year-old, who only played three league games for Coventry City last term due to injury, was forced to sit out the 3-0 defeat against the Premier League side with tight hamstrings.

While Williams will be trying to wrap his players in cotton wool with just a week to go before the League One season starts, he also knows the importance of getting his starting XI for Coventry match fit.

“We need the boys to get the minutes in their legs but we also need them to come through unscathed,” he told BBC Wiltshire.

“We will be very careful with them between now and then and make sure they are in tip-top shape going into that one.

“We have then got a full week to recover and to train to be ready for the league.

“There are crazy results all over the country with teams trying different things or resting players or making lots of changes.

“There are lots of different things going on in pre-season which means the results are quite adverse but performance-wise I thought the boys looked very good (against Swansea) and they looked very fit and sharp.”

As a result of the lack of depth in Town’s squad, scholars Louis Spalding and Jordan Young have both featured regularly in the pre-season schedule.

While Williams is aware their game time may become limited as he pines after new arrivals, he is making the most of this opportunity to expose the teenagers to the first team football environment.

“For sure, at the moment they are training with us regularly,” he added.

“Possibly if more players come into the first team squad or when more players come into the first team squad we might have to take a view then with how much they are involved with the first team.

“Whether or not we give them some more game time with the under 18s and so on and so forth.

“We’re going to use this time when the squad is quite thin to give them the valuable experience of being around the first team every day and being on the pitch in first team friendlies.”