Last week saw midfielder Sam Finley left out of the match day line up and Clarke confirmed the 34-year-old was one of a number of players expected to fight for their places.

Clarke said: "We've got a big squad with 18 players to choose from every Saturday. Competition for places is high so sometimes players miss out.

"We've got to evolve as a football club. When you're manager, you come in, you inherit players, you work with players, but you want to keep evolving to get to the place we need to be and then hard decisions have to be made on whether it's picking playing squads and moving forward and looking at the future.

"That's the way I like to work - we have got too big a squad and I do need players to move on away from the football club, if I'm honest.

"Players need to go and ply their trade elsewhere, but we keep working with those players and those players are training hard, they're fighting hard to try and get back involved and be part of my plans.

"But for certain players the doors is shut at the minute and they need to move on because I'm never going to evolve a team, that in the past has struggled, to get where we need to be. It has to be freshened up and I have to take sentiment out of the way.

"I have no problem with any of my players training hard, but hard decisions have to be made when you're trying to move things forward."

On Saturday, Tranmere face a tough task as they welcome unbeaten Barnet to Prenton Park.

The Londoners, who sit second in the League Two table, are managed by Dean Brennan who is one of English football's longest serving bosses.

"He's doing a cracking job," said Clarke. "They've had a very solid start and he's been building something really good there for a few years now, so we know it's going to be a tough game but we've got to relish these challenges.

"I've been involved in some big matches as a manager and it's always nice when a team's coming like Barnet who have started the campaign really well.

"But we're at home and our own form's been pretty solid. Yes, we'd have liked a few more points, but we're looking forward to it and the players are looking forward to it.

"We look at the strengths and weaknesses of the opposition and do the training week according to that plan.

"I'm not a manager that focuses more on the opposition. I'm always a manager that focuses more about ourselves and what we can do, but also respect their strengths. And I do respect their strengths, but also we have to take care of our business.

"We're Tranmere in League Two and we don't want to be in this division. We want to be in a higher division and evolving the place and trying to turn the place around to start thinking more positively about getting towards the top end of the table and trying to get out of the division eventually. And you don't get that by constantly just working on the opposition. So we work on ourselves, the areas that we need to be better at while we're still respecting the opposition's strengths."

Tranmere have lost just two games out of their 10 in the league this season but with six draws there is a feeling that their start could have been more fruitful in terms of points on the board.

Clarke said: "There's a massive frustration because it's two defeats and we've had a solid start but we're disappointed as a group that we haven't got more points.

"But we have to take our chances, our defensive moments have to be better and we have to keep improving.

"But at the same time it's one of those where there's not drastic things wrong. A lot of the performances have been solid and have been good and should have warranted more points.

"So we keep rolling with what we're doing, keep working on things, trying to improve things, keep trying to keep the players' confidence high and working on the insufficiencies of what we've got at the minute to get better."