Joey Barton hopes to make five more signings before the transfer deadline next Tuesday and he has laid out the positions Bristol Rovers are targeting.
Much of the January window has been focused on outgoings for Rovers, with Bobby Thomas, Trevor Clarke, Zain Westbrooke and Alfie Kilgour all exiting the Gas, while Brentford goalkeeper Ellery Balcombe and Liverpool centre-back Jarell Quansah have signed on loan.
Harvey Saunders is in line to become the fifth player to leave the club this month, with Tranmere Rovers and Hartlepool United among a number of League Two clubs interested in signing the forward on a permanent deal.
As a result, Barton hopes to do plenty of business in the final days of the trading period, with hopes of signing two defenders, two midfielders and a winger – revealing they missed out on the chance to pursue Chelsea and England under-19s winger Harvey Vale due to transfer rules after returning from a loan spell at Hull City this week.
"I’m looking for a centre-half, a left-back, two centre-mids and a left-footer who comes off the right. Will I get all of them? I’m not sure," Barton said.
"The left-footer coming in off the right is going to be tricky. We were trying to get Harvey Vale in and we thought we had a good chance of getting him, but he played for Chelsea in the Papa Johns and he played for Hull, so he couldn’t play for a third club (this season).
"I think that is going to be the tricky position. Centre-mids, we can find. Left-back and a centre-half, we can find. That player off the side might be the one where we come up short in pursuit of, but you never know, let’s see what the market presents.
"There is a long time to go in this window, we’re only just getting going."
The January deadline has been fruitful for Rovers in recent years, with Elliot Anderson and Jonson Clarke-Harris among the players snapped up at the last minute, and Barton expects the Gas to be active all the way up to 11pm on Tuesday.
"Hopefully not, it’s never ideal, but you know this market as well as I do," he said. "The summer market tends to be calmer and people have got bigger plans.
"The January market seems to be, because the season is open, if someone has a bad result this weekend, they are in the market on Monday for something they weren’t, or someone picks an injury up this weekend and someone who was available is no longer available.
"There are going to be some moving parts to it. We want to get them before but I’ve got a feeling that if I want five players, we’re definitely going to be in the last 24 hours of the window. Tuesday night is going to be a late night, by the looks of it."
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