United boss Steven Pressley more than hinted at his Thursday afternoon press conference that he is in the final stages of his chase to pin down a loan striker following weeks of patience and tenacity in the pursuit of his top targets.
When quizzed today by the media on where the situation currently stands, he said: “We are absolutely close to it.
“I can’t tell you how close we are to it. I’m saying this, I’m going to be let down ... but, no, we are really close to it.
“We think it’s going to happen and we think we’ll have news in the very near future. It should be positive news and I have to say that I feel it’s been worth the wait.
“It’s likely to happen before the weekend and we’re really pleased that we’ve got him. This was a target I’ve been pursuing for five or six weeks now, a bit like the other target.
“I’d say about a week ago we felt this particular target was gone because we thought the situation was that he was going to move to another club on a loan deal. That fell through and obviously that puts things in our favour again.
“He’s somebody I’ve pursued for a long time, pretty much from day one of pre-season, so we’re delighted that it looks like it's coming to fruition. I’ve said before that it’s a long season and we’ll need all of the good players to be involved.
“That’s why I was happy to be patient as we waited to see if we could get this done. We’ve been allowed to be patient because we managed to bring in several strikers, just prior to the start of the season, and that bought us a little bit of time.
“We’ve been really happy with how they’ve contributed since coming here, that’s been really encouraging. The striking area is an area where I don’t think you can get enough of them in your club. Scoring goals is vitally important if you’re going to win games and we feel that now, if this goes through as we expect, that we’re now very strong in that area.”
On the selection headaches the potential addition of another new face will bring, he commented: “The one thing I’ve been clear about is the size of the squad.
“I want 17 outfield players with two goalkeepers, and one of the reasons for that is that it will pose selection problems, but every single member of that squad will know they’ll have a big part to play. I think that’s really important.
“If a player knows he’s not far away from starting he feels part of it and he maintains the edge, which is good for everybody.”
