Csaba Looking To Further Strengthen Hearts In Jan

Following on from the imminent signing of Inverness’ Ian Black, Hearts manager Csaba Laszlo is looking at other targets to further strengthen his squad.

The first of those could be FBK Kaunas defender Mantas Fridrikas, who is apparently a player that both Csaba and Vladimir Romanov have been discussing for a number of months now.

Fridrikas is a 20 year-old Lithuanian under-21 internationalist and is said to be very highly rated in Eastern Europe, but Csaba refused to be drawn on whether or not he’d be seen as a replacement for the likes of Christophe Berra, and instead preferred to comment on the current striking situation at the club He said:

‘I know the player, we spoke about him. We spoke this week with Mr Romanov and I have talked to his people to decide the best solution. We have a lot of possibilities but the most important point is we need a scorer. My focus is on strikers at the moment.

‘We definitely need strikers. On Saturday I only had Jamie Mole. If you read the statistics from our matches, we are dangerous from any position but our strikers do not score many goals. We must look for a striker and if somebody leaves the club we can bring someone in.

‘We will look at which players are free, who can play in our team and who can pass the test of the Scottish league. We need someone who can play straight away because in January you don’t have time to build a team, like in summer.

‘I would also like a coach for the strikers. I want to keep the team spirit and bring two or three players in to help us. January is a short transfer window and we have some names, but it depends if we can sell or not. If we buy it needs to be quality and definitely in the striker position.’

I can’t imagine too many of us would disagree with that sentiment!