Doncaster Rovers: Summer shopping spree finished '“ for now

Darren Ferguson says he is happy with the size of his squad at 19 senior players

Rovers have swooped early to sign seven players before the start of pre-season training on Monday.

And Ferguson insists he has completed his planned permanent signings, much to his satisfaction.

Mathieu Baudry, John Marquis, Ross Etheridge, Joe Wright, Matty Blair, Tommy Rowe and Gary McSheffrey have all joined within the last week as Rovers prepare for life in League Two.

Work will continue on securing loan targets but the Rovers boss says they are unlikely to arrive until much closer to the start of the season.

“I think we’re up to about 19 players, excluding the ones that are still here that clearly I don’t want,” Ferguson told The Star.

“One or two young lads like Joe Pugh and Will Longbottom will join us for pre-season.

“In terms of what we’ve got in, we’re going back to training on Monday with decent numbers.

“We’ll probably look at getting one or two loans in but that won’t be now until the later part of July.

“The players that I’ve got in, I’m happy with. I’m certainly not looking at buying any more players at the moment.

“We’ll be looking at the loan market and I’m already up at 19 players without going into that.

“That’s very good really.”

Changes to the loans market means Football League can only agree temporary deals during transfer windows and on a half season or campaign long basis.

While keen to secure targets, Ferguson says most players will carry out pre-season at their parent clubs.

For such a large number of permanent signings to be completed so early is unusual for any club, with many in the Football League still yet to secure a single deal.

Ferguson says he is delighted to have so much of his business completed as he looks to hit the ground running when the players report back to Cantley Park for training on Monday.

He said: “It has been what I hoped it would be.

“It’s what we set out to do as soon as the season finished and probably before that because we had certain targets that we managed to get.

“We’re at seven now and we’ve got the ones we wanted really which is very rare, especially at this time of the season.

“But we’ve made a statement that we’re really proactive and aggressive in the market.”