Holloway desperate to bolster Pool

Ian Holloway is desperate to bolster his squad after admiting Blackpool are "20 million miles" behind their Premier League rivals.

Holloway readily admits he needs new faces to bolster his squad, but is pleased about having already landed Israel international defender Dekel Keinan from Maccabi Haifa.

He told Sky Sports News: "If I had to go in with this (squad), I would be packing my bags and packing it in to be fair because we're not ready - we won't be ready, I don't expect these young lads to be ready.

"But with the likes of Dekel coming in, a 25-26 year old lad who has played in the Champions League last year, played for Maccabi Haifa for God knows how many years, he's not going to be worried about where we're going to go and play and he's a great lad and I'm delighted to have him."

Holloway added he has watched so many games this summer in pursuit of players that he is almost fed up with football at the moment.

He said: "It's true - I could do with a break and I'm not getting one. But, as I say, all the hard work needs to be done now, it's absolutely crazy rules because the window slams shut upon us and is really a restriction of trade, and I'm not going to stop saying that, that's the truth, it's absolute madness.

"But as I say, we're just literally trying to find out what clubs want by making offers - and our initial first few offers weren't very good and were quite insulting I think to the clubs who we spoke to.

"Hopefully now the chairman will be back on the 23rd and we can get the full lot of business sorted out that we need to."

He added they will make offers for players, clubs will ask for a price and by the end the two will then meet somewhere almost in the middle.

"That almost in the middle is about 10 miles away from where we used to deal so that is taking some pushing to actually get us, all of us, to actually want to do it."

He added: "(But) we will be doing it and whether we're ready or not, time will tell.

"Whether we're good enough or not, time will tell but we are starting 20 million miles behind (everyone else) and I just need everybody to understand that.

"But hopefully people like how we're trying to do it and they'll like what we're trying to do and they'll like the frankness that I'm giving you right now because it is a one heck of an education for me and I'm loving every minute of it, but I need you to understand that this group now I will be adding to whenever I can."

He agreed with Tony Pulis' comments when the Stoke boss said he will have to feed in the transfer market from the scraps left by the big clubs.

"Lots of people feed off the top table, we won't be able to do that. Tony will be able to feed close to that now with their scraps. I'll probably have to pick their scraps up off the floor and start chewing them but I'll have a right good go."