FRUSTRATED Darlington manager Craig Liddle has hit out at football's governing bodies for their role in "potentially damaging" the club's young players.

Tuesday's defeat at Hayes & Yeading saw him use six teenagers in the starting XI with all five of the substitutes being youth team players.

Having not paid players' wages, a strict transfer embargo is in place that means Liddle is unable to strengthen a threadbare squad that is down to ten senior pros, including Graeme Lee and Aaron Brown who were missing on Tuesday due to injury.

He was permitted to bring in 17-year-old Jordan Pickford on loan from Sunderland, but the Football Conference deemed a goalkeeper to be a specialist position so Quakers must persevere with their young team.

Saturday's game at home to York City will be another huge occasion, with the visitors backed by a large following, and Liddle says the circumstances are not healthy for his talented teenagers.

He said: "The FA go on about protecting and producing young players, but it's ludicrous for that many of them to go out there on a Tuesday night at Hayes & Yeading. It's crazy sticking them into an environment like that.

"The authorities will not do anything I'm pretty certain of that because we don't seem to be getting much help from anywhere.

"I've got to get on with it, but we are potentially damaging young players, asking them to go out in them circumstances.

"Until the rules are sorted out and someone comes to their senses and changes it I can't do anything about it. I can't bring anybody in so we are damaging young kids.

"You look at the bench and I feel sorry for them because you're asking kids to do a man's job. It's not right, but we don't have much choice.

"I feel for the young players. They aren't out of their depth because they are good players, but physically it's a mismatch.

"They're getting knocked off the ball. At youth team level they can handle it, but at this level it's too much and potentially some of these kids might not recover if we keep getting battered week in, week out it's going to have a psychological effect."

Of Quakers' 16 at Hayes & Yeading, nine are still in the youth system or have come through the ranks, including Jamie Barton who was scored on only his second senior appearance.

While winger Danny Lambert crowned his debut by creating a consolation goal in injury time, Liddle says too many juniors are being relied on.

"It is brilliant that we've got youngsters that can go in and play, but not that many should be playing," he said. "It's alright putting one or two in at a time, but seven or eight is too many.

"Five or six of them were regularly in my youth team three months ago.

"I've told the senior players to remember that these are young kids so they are going to make mistakes. But they have been brought up the right way and will give everything that they've got.

"There's two choices for me: we can either point the finger of blame at each other or we can stick together and understand that these kids must learn and learn quickly.

"The youngsters have been thrown in at the deep end but we can't do anything about it."

Tuesday's defeat leaves Darlington two place and two points above the relegation zone.

Liddle added: "We have got to fight our way out of this because we smack-bang in the middle of a relegation scrap without any shadow of a doubt.

"We've got to get as many points as we can to get us to safety as quickly as possible."