Elgin City manager Allan Hale will weigh up a raft of Borough Briggs trialists and adopt an experimental approach in his effort to strengthen the Black and Whites' cinch SPFL League 2 standing
Register for free to read more of the latest local news. It's easy and will only take a moment.
The first of a series of Elgin City trialists is set to hit the training ground this week.
New manager Allan Hale said he will run the rule over several players over the next few weeks as he bids to strengthen the Borough Briggs squad.
After watching City lose 4-0 at East Fife in his opening match in charge of the Black and Whites, Hale and his assistant Stefan Laird have delved into their contact base to identify available players who they are willing to give the opportunity to impress them.
The new management duo will also look to do some business in the January transfer window after pinpointing positions in the team they need to bolster.
"It is always difficult to do business in January and that will be no different at Elgin," said Hale. "We have identified some players that we mentioned to the board during the interview process so there’s things we are working on in the background.
"Hopefully we will be able to get some deals done and bring in some fresh faces.
"We’ve got people coming in on trial as well over the next three or four weeks so we will get a close look at them.
"There is one in this week, three due in next week and two more just after Christmas. It gives us the opportunity to look at players and see if they are capable of helping us out for the second half of the season.
"We had identified that before we came in so it’s something we have been working on over the last week or so in terms of trying to identify players and see where we are in terms of trying to move forward with some options.
"There’s some players who don’t have a contract at the moment. Whether they have been abroad or their contracts have come to an end because their seasons are different abroad, and they are home from that now and available.
"There’s others who are in contract at clubs who have been given permission to go and train. And there’s people who just haven’t had a contract for a while.
"It’s a mix of personnel that’s available. Some are coming on through Scotland but also some are coming in through England.
"It gives us that options and that is just utilising the contacts that we have built up over the years and seeing if we can find any suitable to help us over the second half of the campaign.
"We can see them in training and if we need to arrange a training game to see more then we have the option to do that as well. If we can get them up for a couple of weeks, that is four training sessions and you can usually paint a picture within that time as to what they are going to be like for us.
"Obviously not all of them will be good enough but if you can pick up one or two, then the exercise is worthwhile.
Hale attended exit trial matches while he was manager at his last club Huntly and made signings for the Highland League club based on what he saw at the games.
It is a networking approach which he plans to continue at Elgin, and he revealed how he may adopt an experimental approach in games ahead of the transfer window reopening.
"I think there is a little bit of an imbalance to the team in terms of the depth and the options.
"You’ve got a lot of options in certain areas and you’ve got very little options in other areas. There’s varying circumstances for that with injuries that contribute to that.
"We will be looking to give the team a better balance for the second half of the campaign, give us more depth and give us the ability to rotate the team if we see the need to and maybe chop and change formation if we need to as well.
"Over the next couple of weeks we are probably going to potentially trial a couple of things to see what structure gets the best out of the group.
"We just need to keep them organised at the moment and focused on the next game ahead and we will prepare as best we can through the week, so hopefully the players can shoulder their true capabilities at the weekend - and they are more than capable of doing that.
"You have to keep believing in your work and your ideas and get the player believing and focused on the same goal. Once we start to do that, we will turn the corner."
