PAUL Cox will tell Barrow AFC owner Paul Casson there can only be a sustained promotion bid if his squad is reinforced next month.

Cox was down to the bare bones for the Boxing Day visit of Gateshead – with only 14 players both available and fully fit.

Andy Haworth and Myles Anderson took their places on the bench despite injury and illness respectively, while Jordan Williams will return from suspension for the New Year's Eve match at Gateshead today.

However, that leaves only 17 men, with Paul Turnbull still fighting to be fit and loan duo Tim Erlandsson and Ryan Yates both having exited Holker Street – one after his spell was up and the other with a knee problem.

Barrow manager Cox knows it is impossible for him to operate with such a skeleton staff for any length of time.

Andy Parry, Joel Dixon and Dan Cockerline are all sidelined for the season with cruciate knee ligament damage, thus leaving AFC with a squad down on numbers and in need of serious reinforcement come the transfer window.

With the likes of Williams and Moussa Diarra – the latter linked variously with Cardiff City, Preston North End and Rotherham depending upon which rumour you hear – thought to be targets themselves, Cox is determined to convince Casson of the need to spend money to bring in new blood when they meet next week.

“I hope there are really positive talks when Paul comes across,” said Cox, with the chairman set to be in town ahead of the huge FA Cup third-round tie against Rochdale. “He’s always been supportive, but now is the time when, if you look at the size of our squad compared to everybody else in the play-off places, we’re down on numbers. Even more so with the issues this week.

“Even if we had kept Ryan, even if we had kept Tim I would still have been banging on the chairman’s door to bring in extra quality. I’m talking about players who will not just come and make up the squad numbers, but who can come and walk into our 11 and make one or two of our 11 sit on the stands or on the bench.

“That’s very hard to do, but once again we have been working very hard – myself, Gary (Simpson, assistant manager), Paul Ogden (chief scout), Ben (Marvin, club analyst) – we’ve covered a lot of games, we’ve watched a lot of DVDs, and we know, realistically, who we want. These players will come in and I want them to make our 11, our squad, to sit up and take notice.

“That’s what we need now. To be realistic in terms of our ambition to be promoted, to compete in the play-off places, to compete in the FA Cup and the FA Trophy – and dare I say the Lancashire Senior Cup –we need some extra bodies and quality.

“Again, that’s not damning on the players who are here, but sometimes the run we are on can make people relax, can put people in the comfort zone. I want to shake everyone up and make sure we’re not in the comfort zone and we don’t miss out by me being too nice, making sure I’m doing the job to the best of my ability.”

Cox knows that not just any player will do for a team involved in a National League promotion push, as well as the FA Cup and FA Trophy.

He only wants to bring in men who will fit in with the current squad, and added: “It’s not about just going and getting good players. The players we bring in have to be similar to the mindset of the players we have got.

“They’re a great group. We’re 25 games unbeaten and sometimes you look at that and it’s the consistency that clubs in this country – even the big boys in the Premier League – haven’t got.

“We’ve got to be mindful of the fact that we’re in four competitions. If we were to win in the FA Cup, if we were to win in the FA Trophy, if we were to win in the Senior Cup, the backlog of fixtures is going to become huge.

“I don’t want us to fall by the wayside and just miss out by a scenario like we had on Boxing Day, by only really having 14 fit players. The two players who were injured, I think they declared themselves fit just because they understood what number we had. I take my hat off to them, but we can’t carry on with just 16 players – we’re not going to be successful if we carry on with that level of numbers.”