United moved early to secure their first signing of the January window with defender Joel Senior secured as the first real trading day [Monday] opened up in earnest.
“It’s nice to get the first one done early in the window,” manager Keith Millen told us. “We’ve got a few others who are close, but we won’t get too excited until they actually sign and are in the building.
“Having said that, if I was a betting man, I would probably put some money on us maybe having one or two more in time for Bradford.
“I’m certainly not frustrated at the moment, because it’s still early days. We’ve had a few who have fallen by the wayside, but that happens.
“That’s why you don’t only have one target, you need to have two or three so that if one drops away you’re ready to go for the next one.
“If you put all your eggs in one basket and it falls away, that’s when you can get frustrated. We’ve missed out on a few, but we’ve quickly moved on to our next one and that’s the process we’ve put in place.
“Hopefully we’ll see the rewards from that later in the week.”
“We were hoping to get some done early and that’s how it’s panned out,” he continued. “It’s been difficult because of Covid, what you’ve found is a lot of the top clubs are hoarding some of their players because they’re worried about the size of their squads.
“Some of the players we’ve spoken about, we’ve been told you might have to wait until the end of January, which you don’t really want to do.
“If we can get a few more through the door this week we’d have done really well. It’ll mean they were our targets and there won’t be many deals done this early, I don’t think.
“If we can, it’s great, because it’s more games for them to be involved in.”
And with a defender already in the building, we wondered if the attacking areas would now become the focus.
“That’s one of the positions we need to add to,” he agreed. “I don’t know which, if any of them, will get done this week.
“I’m hoping we’re close to them but we need to add more goals and threat to the team. We said that from day one. Whether they get done this week or not, I’m hopeful, but we have to wait and see.”
A chat on transfer targets couldn’t be allowed to pass by without mention on the situation with stopper Mark Howard, who has been in talks about an extension to his current stay.
“There’s been more conversations behind the scenes, definitely,” he said. “I’d like to say we’re closer.
“Mark knows I want him to stay, Mark’s told me he wants to stay, so if both parties are in the same direction then I’m hopeful we can get something done soon.”
