Wanderers' pre-season warm up continued with a none too impressive 1-0 victory against Halifax at The Shay.

But while manager Sam Allardyce was hardly raving about the quality of the performance he is not worried.

"I'm pleased with the preparation," he explained. "In football terms we're a little bit lacking - you could see that with our shape and the way we played.

"But the core strength of the players is there and the fitness levels are where we want to be at this stage. We'll move onto the football more and get the skill work going and the pattern better and be ready for the 18th."

Wanderers fans got their first glimpse of new midfielder Djibril Diawara, whose early tackle on Paul Harsley was anything but "friendly".

Allardyce described the man from Senegal, who is on a season-long loan from Torino as "a little bit impetuous" but believes his all-round strength and deceptive pace for such a big man (he's 6ft 4ins) will be "well suited to the Premiership".

One thing Wanderers will be looking for when the season gets under way will be the good fortune Ian Marshall enjoyed when, after having a header cleared off the line, he chased an Anthony Barness pass to the bye-line and managed to beat Halifax keeper Lee Butler from an almost impossible angle.

Among the crowd of 1,150 was a Liverpool scouting contingent headed by legendary former centre-half Ron Yeats, who is compiling a dossier for Gerard Houllier ahead of the August 27 Reebok Premier league showdown.

Wanderers: Jaaskelainen (sub 80 mins Williams); Barness, Bergsson, Whitlow (sub 56 mins Johnson), Richardson; Gardner, Diawara, Nolan (sub 85 mins Buchanan), Farrelly; Gallacher (sub 56 mins Johnson), Marshall.

Halifax Town: Butler; Harsley, Jules, Swailes (sub 73 mins Stoneman), Clarke (C), Woodward (sub 78 mins Mitchell), Middleton (sub Oleksewiycz 64 mins), Redfearn, Kerrigan, Wood (sub 64 mins Jones), Midgley (sub 70 mins Clarke (M)).