Trialists in Betfred might be a winner

It’s good to see the new season almost upon us with the Betfred Cup starting this weekend.

It’s always difficult to take anything out of pre-season friendlies and to really know where a team is at, especially playing lower league teams.

However, that’s always been the way in this area to take on sides like Arbroath, Montrose and Brechin tonight for Dundee.

Some teams go abroad and the Dark Blues have done that over the past few years but when you’re just taking on smaller teams and looking at trialists you might as well do that here.

With the way budgets at Scottish clubs are right now they are looking for any way to save a few pennies and why not play closer to home?

It’s a fairly relaxed series of games to ease the players back into things but that can be a problem when looking at trialists.

Because you’re not really seeing them in a fair match situation — the pressure on the players and on the ball just isn’t the same.

That’s why you should be able to field trialists in the new Betfred Cup group stages.

As far as I’m aware, you’re not allowed to do so and there’s no plans to change that rule.

However, with the end of the transfer window still almost two months away, it’s not that fair on some of the teams because, no doubt, there will be a few sides that just aren’t ready in terms of where they want their playing squad to be.

I think it would be perfect for clubs and players looking for a new team alike to be able to maybe have a couple of trialists on the go for the group stages.

That way managers could have a proper look at free agents in competitive games and whether they could do a job for the team. I wouldn’t expect anything like that to happen, though.

It’s still a long, long wait until playing squads are finalised and I expect some more business to be done at Dens.

The word is manager Neil McCann is after another striker and, for me, that’s exactly what they need.

If you look at how tight the division was last season, having that player that can turn a 0-0 or 1-0 defeat into a victory can be the difference between a mediocre season and a really good one.

German midfielder Nils Rutten played for Dundee as a trialist in the weekend’s 2-1 win over Arbroath.