Darlington have released almost its entire squad as a major team rebuilding exercise starts ahead of the 2007/08 season.

Since Christmas fifteen players have left the Darlington Arena with four more told they have no future at the club this week. It leaves the club with just seven contracted players on its books, with the futures of another five that are out of contract expected to be sorted soon.

Last night winger Neil Wainwright put pen to paper after agreeing to extend his current deal by another year. This means that manager Dave Penney will be one of the busiest football league managers over the close season as any new players will need to be bought in before the pre-season preparations start.

Chairman George Houghton said: "This summer will be one of the most exciting closed seasons in the club's history. I am determined to overhaul the playing squad and herald a new Darlo era. Over the past few months Dave has been trimming the squad but now we have reached the end of the season we can complete the clearout. The board has already sanctioned a very competitive transfer budget and we hope to be attracting players who are in, or have the potential, to be playing in the Championship. Since arriving fourteen months ago we have successfully turned this club around off the pitch. Now it is time to concentrate on the team."

Manager Dave Penney said: "Telling players they have no future at the club is always the most difficult thing a manager has to do in my opinion. However I have a job to do which is to make sure Darlington has the right personnel to make a determined promotion bid next season. I have been given my transfer budget and have drawn up a list of targets that I am actively chasing and hope to be announcing some exciting new signings over the coming weeks and months."

Meanwhile a further £150,000 will also be spent on replacing the playing surface at the Darlington Arena with a ready-grown reinforced state of the art fibre sand pitch. It is hoped the reserve team will play its reserve games away from the Darlington Arena in order to preserve the playing surface. Next season the team continue to train at Chester-le-Street.