RECORD STRAIGHT
Picture: SPORTSFILE
Dundalk boss Vinny Perth hasn’t ruled out adding to his squad before their Champions League campaign begins in mid-August.
The Lilywhites now know they will be in first round qualifying action on either August 18th or 19th and are hopeful that the league will be back in some capacity before then.
While Perth is happy with the strength of his squad right now, he is also aware that players can become available in the summer as the more traditional seasons in the UK and much of Europe wind to a close.
‘It is an option and we’re always open to it but at the moment we don’t know what sort of league we’ll have this year,’ he said when asked about possible additions.
‘We expect there will be a league of some sort but it could just be 13 games. Again, that’s the problem.
‘We’ve built a squad for 36 games and it’s a lot easier to keep people happy over that amount of games than it is 13.
‘We played 55 games in total last year whereas this year it could be 13 and a couple of European games so we’ve got to be careful we don’t have too big of a squad either.
‘That said, we’ve got a board that is willing to back us. If I bring anything to their door then they’re certainly willing to discuss it.
‘If Dani Alves becomes available, I’ll have to work out who is the best between him and Sean Gannon,’ laughed Perth.
The 43-year-old said he was pleased with the manner in which he had ‘flipped’ the squad to allow for better attacking options this season.
‘The squad is the same size as last year but we have flipped it around,’ he said.
‘Jarvis is gone and Folan is gone. We only had three wingers last year - Duffy, Mountney and Kelly. When Duffy couldn’t play in Riga, Patrick McEleney had to play there and we missed John with a lot of injuries last year so Jamie McGrath was our back-up on that right-hand side.
‘Now we’ve got those three and Stefan Colovic and Nathan Oduwa so we feel we’ve flipped the squad around to have real strength in the forward areas. We just haven’t seen it in action yet.
‘We had five defenders on the bench against Shels but all of a sudden then we went up to Ballybofey with Patrick McEleney, Stefan Colovic and Jordan Flores on the bench so that’s ultimately where we want to get to and we’re not far off that.
‘You can see in the last week or so that Patrick Hoban and Stefan Colovic have a wonderful partnership already but we just have to fit them into the team now,’ he said.
Meanwhile, Perth said there was no update as yet on the possibility of Cammy Smith returning to the club after his loan spell from Dundee United ended.
‘There is none yet,’ he said when asked for an update on the future of the Scottish midfielder.
‘I think they’re due to return to training next week so he’ll be having meetings himself there then and we’ll take it from there depending on how they go.’
The good news at present is that all players are currently fit and healthy following their return to training.
‘Our medical department has been superb,’ said Perth.
‘We’ve got to drive the club towards being a European club. That has always been my goal and the departments that are ready for that more than any other is the strength and conditioning and medical departments.
‘Everybody is training at the moment. Yes, we’ll protect one or two because you’ll always get little niggles but the fitness levels have been superb. We’ve already played five-a-sides and done shooting drills because of the work the players put in through the lockdown with Graham Norton in particular.’