Recruitment plans for next season already underway
First Team

Recruitment plans for next season already underway

26th April 2018

Thursday 26 April 2018

With the announcement last week that two of Saints’ long-serving players will be leaving the club this summer, manager Tommy Wright has already got one eye on next season and player recruitment for the 2018/19 Scottish Premiership season.

Alan Mannus and Steven MacLean – both members of the 2014 Scottish Cup-winning team – will be parting company with the club after 13 years of service between them, and although he admits it will be a loss to the Saints squad, the players are leaving with their manager’s blessing.

“Both Steven and Alan have been a major part of the success of the club over the past six or seven seasons. They’ve given everything for the club and they go with the best wishes from the club and from me too. Hopefully they can go on and have good endings to their careers.

“I can fully understand both players’ decisions to leave. Steven was offered a deal he couldn’t turn down from a big club at Hearts, and Alan’s wife is from Dublin and they’d been planning to go back there to raise his young family.

“It’s always disappointing when you lose players, particularly players that have done so well for you and that you have built up good relationships with. That’s football though and players and managers will move on that’s just the industry we’re in.

“It gives other players an opportunity to step up as well. We’re looking to strike the right balance with our recruitment and want a mix of youth and experience in our squad so that’s what we’ll be aiming for in the summer.”

Despite having confirmed that two experienced players will be leaving in the summer, Tommy doesn’t believe there will be a huge overhaul of the squad in the close season. On-loan midfielder George Williams has been linked with a permanent move to McDiarmid Park and it’s a deal that the manager is keen to do.

“I would class an overhaul as 8 or 9 new faces,” Tommy said, “and that won’t be the case here. I think ideally we’d like to secure probably 4 outfield players and a goalkeeper during the summer window.

“We’ve got players that we recruited this season such as David McMillan and Stefan Scougall who have missed spells through injury and will come back into the squad. Regarding the goalkeeper situation, we have Zander Clark and young Mark Hurst but we’ll look to add another ‘keeper in the summer too.

“We’re already busy and have had meetings with some agents in the past few weeks about potential signings. We’ve spoken to George Williams’ agent and he’s a player we’d like to retain when his loan spell comes to an end.

“We’re still waiting on clarification from Fulham on his situation because they still have an option on him. Once that’s been decided we can look to move things forward. He’s a player who has done well since he arrived here and would add a lot to the squad.

“If we can add four or five to the squad, as well as continue to develop our young players such as Kyle McLean and Alistair McCann, then I think we can mount a challenge for the top six once again next season.”

As well as recruiting new players, the club is also looking to secure the future of a number of existing players whose contracts are up at the end of the current campaign. The manager has already held talks with those players he’s keen to see stay at the club and is confident their futures will be sorted out in the coming weeks.

“We’ve put offers on the table for quite a number of the players who are out of contract and we’re basically just waiting on the agents to get back to us.

“You never want to be over confident but there’s been no real indication from any of the players that the offers we’ve made are going to be refused. They maybe just need tweaked a little and then they should be sorted. We’ve got two players in particular with options that naturally kick in, and again I think it will just be a case of making a few tweaks.

“I’m confident that the players we want to keep at the football club will accept our offers and hopefully we can have their futures sorted out in the next week or so.”

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