JAMIE Day says a final decision will be taken by the middle of next week on which trialists Welling United will be able to sign up.

The Wings player-boss already has 15 members under contract for the forthcoming campaign and admits ideally he would like to increase that number to 18.

However, he won’t discover if he can do so until next week and the manager hinted he may be prepared to loan players from Millwall and Charlton this season if he has to.

Day said: “I would love to get 18 in the squad but I don’t really know if that is going to be the case.

“If I can get 17, I would be pleased with that figure as well.

“I’m probably looking at 16 and then maybe getting a couple in on loan from Charlton or Millwall if needed.

“We’ve got another couple of weeks to see if we can generate some money off the pitch and hopefully we can get to that 18 number if we can.”

He added: “We have a good relationship with Charlton and Millwall and they’ve both said they can help out if we need players, so we will have to go along that route if we can’t get the 18.

“I’m happy with the 15 players we’ve got signed up at the minute, so I’ve just got to be careful with the other three and how much they are going to cost.

“I think I will know in the next 10 days what the final budget is because there are players like Anthony Achempong who we would like to keep but if we can’t afford them, they are looking for other clubs so we need to be fair to them.”

As well as Achempong, Day also confirmed who else he would like to keep on in an ideal world.

The manager said: “Femi Omogbehin was at my college a couple of years ago and I coached him.

“He went to Sittingbourne, had a bit of a fall out there and trained with us last year.

“We said we would have a look at him again this year but again it just depends upon money and how many players we can have in our squad.

“Jordan Johnson is another one from my college who I rate quite highly.

“He is a young lad who has just been released by Cambridge United and we are probably going to be look to keep him because it wouldn’t be for a massive amount money wise.”

And Day was also able to confirm several trialists had already been handed bad news by the club in the run-up to Saturday’s memorable 4-1 win over Arsenal.

“We’ve had to say to a few we couldn’t afford to keep them on,” he explained.

“Junior Dadson is one of those players and it is unfortunate because he did really well with us but we probably can’t afford what he is looking for.

“Realistically we are going to look at players who can do a similar job on a little bit less money than he was wanting.”

Day was understandably delighted with the way Welling performed against a talented young Arsenal side on Saturday.

However, he warned his squad not to get too carried away with the result ahead of the new season.

“I was very pleased with how it went against Arsenal,” he said.

“I thought we did well in the previous games against Charlton and Millwall, although today I felt we defended a lot better than we had done in those two games.

“In all three games we’ve looked really sharp attacking wise and created chances.

“The difference against Arsenal was we were able to take some of the chances we created.

“I said to the boys after the game they can’t let the standard drop now because we’ve got to a level we are happy with.

“Now we’ve got games against teams who are in leagues below us and we’ve got to maintain that standard.

“Everybody wants to play well in the big games and show what they can do but for us now we’ve got to take it into our remaining pre-season games.

“Obviously the main one for us is on August 14 against Hampton.”

But Day was tight-lipped on whether he would pursue either of the Canadian trialists who played against the Gunners.

“One came on at left back, the other one in midfield and he scored,” the manager added.

“They both did OK but it will basically come down to what we’ve got left in the budget.”