DAVID Flitcroft has prioritised signing a new striker as he continues to overhaul his Swindon Town squad this summer.

Paul Mullin was brought in from League Two rivals Morecambe at the start of pre-season and marked his first appearance in Town colours on Saturday with a hat-trick in the 7-1 friendly win over Swindon Supermarine.

Luke Norris is the only established senior forward left over from last season’s squad and was also on target at the Webbswood Stadium.

Despite those two’s encouraging early signs, Flitcroft is still short of attacking options as he continues to prepare Town for the start of the season proper on August 5.

When asked post-match at Marine which areas of his squad he was primarily focussed on strengthening, Flitcroft said “Down the middle of the pitch.

“At striker we have got Luke Norris, who carries a big presence up front, but Luke might get injured tomorrow so you can’t throw all your eggs in that basket. That’s something we are looking at.

“Ben Purkiss went across to centre half today and that’s something we wanted to look at and putting Tom Smith at right back.

“We’ve had a look at certain things because obviously we are still in the recruitment stage of what we are doing so it was good for us to have a look just from an initial point of view of the matrix of the squad.”

Former Blackburn Rovers and Sheffield United striker Jordan Slew could be one option for Flitcroft, with the 24-year-old one of five trialists to feature for Town against Marine and he opened the visitors’ goals account in the first half.

Winger Donal McDermott was another of the quintet that Flitcroft was running the rule over, however, the Town chief said no decisions on whether to offer contracts to trialists will be made on the Marine match alone.

“Jordan is here and we are having a look at him. The lads are in front of him in their pre-season work and we will just see how he catches up,” said Flitcroft.

“Donal has had quite a few clubs contact him and there’s interest from them. He knows me from up in the north and what environment I like to set so that gave us a chance to get Donal in and have a look at him.

“This was not a game to judge the trialists.

“What I am judging them on is what they have done in the week, what their power output is, what the physical demands are and how they are growing into the group.

“This wasn’t a big enough test for us to start judging what trialists can do in a game situation but application level was one thing we were looking at and that was certainly there and I was happy with a lot of the performances.”