Jay Saunders will start to whittle down Maidstone’s trialists after the 5-0 friendly defeat by Barnet.

United fielded eight trialists against the League 2 club on Saturday - four in each half - with mixed success.

Boss Saunders liked the look of Johnville Pringle and Tyler Campbell in particular but others will be on their way.

Whoever survives will have another chance at VCD on Tuesday night, then Saunders wants to get on with his regular squad.

He said: “There were probably a couple who stood out who I’ll have another look at.

“There’s others I think, without being too harsh, they’re not quite at the level we need them at and that shows you how the squad’s moved on.

“These lads can look good in training but you need to see them in games and there’s only one way of doing that and that’s putting them in.

“We tried to mix them in with the lads because you get a better gauge of where they’re at.

“There’s no point putting them all in together in one half, it’s better to mix them in.

“I think it was important we did that. If we hadn’t, with the size of squad we’ve got, we’d have ended up with lads playing 90 minutes in the first week and I didn’t want that.

“I thought the boy Tyler Campbell stood out as the pick of the bunch second half and I thought Johnville Pringle had a very good first half at times.”

The friendly was arranged as part of the deal that took Dan Sweeney to Barnet.

It was the only available date but came too early for a Stones side who were in their first week of pre-season training.

Saunders said: “It was good to have Barnet down here but you could probably see they’re a week ahead of us fitness-wise and they looked that little bit sharper.

“Also, when you mix it up like we did and you’ve got lads who aren’t used to playing together, it always makes it that little bit harder.

“But it was a worthwhile exercise in the end, the boys have got some minutes under their belt, we could see what they need fitness-wise."