Airdrieonians re-sign key men

Airdrie have re-signed a host of key players ahead of a proposed October league kick-off – and they hope to add a new midfielder this week.

The Diamonds secured Paul McKay, Ally Roy and Josh Kerr on new deals after impressing last term.

Director of football Stuart Millar is now looking for more creativity and revealed he’s close to making a new signing,

He said:“We’re hopeful, we’re speaking to a number of players, but it’s making that actual commitment.

“We’re very conscious of the fact that there are certain areas of the squad that we need to improve, I think all Airdrie fans know that we need to improve the midfield area.

“That’s no disrespect to who already is there, or was there previously.

“We scored a number of goals last season and we were very good regarding the conceding of goals – I think we were second behind Falkirk in that – so we’re just looking for a wee bit of creativity in midfield.

“We don’t want to lose the work-rate that we have there, but we’re close to a signing, though nothing is 100 per cent sure.

“We’re hoping to have something this week.”

Following McKay, Roy and Kerr’s deal, Millar says he hopes at least one more star from last season will also commit their future to the club.

He said:“The three that re-signed were ones we had been speaking to for a wee while, and they had other options, so were glad to get them fixed up.

“There is one other that is kind of 50-50 that we need to try and tie up in the next wee while, so we’ll see.”

Millar says players will need to return to training in the first week of September at the latest if they are to return on October 17 as hoped, but clubs need to be wary.

“There are still a number of things to resolve,”he said.

“We don’t know if it will be behind closed doors, if there will be a percentage of the crowd there, but we certainly need to get the players back training prior to that.

“It has been a long time; even if we got them back at in September, you’re still talking about six months they’ve not been together, and that’s a long time. You would need to be careful regarding injuries and everything else.”