Purposeful Ange Postecoglou wants Celtic to be on the front foot when it comes to landing new signings in January.
The 56-year-old has battled a raft of injuries and it's understood he is keen to land Japanese trio Daizen Maeda, Reo Hatate and Yosuke Ideguchi when the window opens.
Celtic are six points behind Rangers in the race for the Premiership title and play their final fixture against St Johnstone on Boxing Day, ahead of the winter break which has been brought forward amid surging Omicron cases.
Postecoglou believes won't be in the position they found themsleves in the summer, as 12 players after the Australian's arrival.
And he is targeting getting new signings up and running before they face Hibs on Monday, January 17.
Speaking to Sky Sports, he said: "We've got a plan in place, obviously now we know there is some certainty around fixtures and when our first game back is, we will come up with a plan where hopefully we will get some of our guys who are injured back on the training pitch which would be great and also bring in a few (players).
"We are still with the intent of trying to bring them early and if we can and, from my perspective, it would be ideal if we can get them in from when we restart training and give them a bit of lead into the second half of the year.
"It's challenging, I don't think I'll go through another transfer period like the first one, we had to bring in 12, that was something unique.
"This time I can be a bit more measured, we have been working at it a lot longer, we kind of know what we want, it's still a challenge because it's not an exact science.
"Hopefully we get them in, we get the ones we want in and get them in early."
