WANDERERS are under orders to “step it up” when they face Mansfield Town this afternoon.

Phil Parkinson is looking to increase his players’ workload at the One Call Stadium after a successful start to pre-season in Scandinavia.

Only Alex Finney completed the full game against Helsingor in Denmark, with most featuring for 45 minutes and Conor Wilkinson and Chris Taylor for just 20 minutes.

The Wanderers boss is now asking his players to keep their standards high as they travel to face the Stags for the first time since 1993, when a goal from Mark Seagraves secured a priceless point for Bruce Rioch’s side in their march towards promotion.

“I think as time goes on you want that little bit more intensity, building towards the start of the season, and so in the Mansfield game we want to see that progression,” the boss told The Bolton News.

“I’ve been very pleased by the reaction of the players to what we have asked of them so far but you don’t sit around and pat yourself on the back, you move on, step it up, and try to improve on aspects of your play.”

With options thin on the ground in some positions, Parkinson is due to take a look at some of his development squad players over the course of the next two friendlies – which has led to the cancellation of Wednesday night’s Under-21 outing against Chester.

Exciting striker Alex Samizadeh is one of the youngsters expected to make the step-up after impressing in his first couple of appearances for the development squad this summer.

Wanderers face Tranmere in Warwick Rimmer’s testimonial on Tuesday night and it is likely some of the trialists who have been training at Lostock over the past seven days will also be included in the squad to make up the numbers.

The club has confirmed that Derik Osede and Rob Holding will not be in the squad after sustaining minor hamstring injuries last week.

Wanderers fans can buy their tickets for the game on the day after Mansfield reversed their decision to allow cash entry on their away turnstiles.

The League Two club had a change of heart yesterday after just 150 tickets had been pre-purchased by Whites fans from Bolton Central for the game.