I'd make that 6 as we need another centre back to challenge/provide cover for Cyrus and Hannigan. Sam Heathcote needs to go out on loan to an Evo Stick team to toughen him up for this league.
I think sending any players out on loan to a lower league is utterly pointless.
The standard of the league even one below will be markedly worse than conf north. If players need time elsewhere they aren't good enough. By all accounts Sam is so just play him in the side, he'll toughen up soon enough, he'll get used to playing with the new players too and some cohesion will avoid any more capitulations like Fylde.
Leaving him out of the squad for two games out of every three certainly won't help.
We aren't going up this season more than likely but we wont go down either we might as well work on trying to gel these lads together and get rid of anyone we know we can replace with better.
One things for sure, with our current squad size if we still need six players then we must at least 4 that can go!