Robbie Neilson wants to add at least a further five new signings to his Hearts squad. The Jambos boss has made a fast start to the summer transfer window by adding Alan Forrest, Kye Rowles and Lewis Neilson to his ranks already.
The Tynecastle side are tooling up for a crack at the Europa League but are guaranteed group stage football in the Europa Conference League even if they fall short in qualifying for UEFA's second tier tournament. And that will require a strengthened squad to further push the players who comfortably finished third in last year's Premiership, with Neilson telling the Edinburgh Evening News he has plenty more targets on his radar.
He plans to target several areas including another striker, a pair of creative attackers, a central midfielder and another defender. Lawrence Shankland had been identified as a potential attacking addition but Belgian side Beerschot have insisted the Scotland international is not for sale.
Regardless, Neilson has insisted he intends to keep pushing for new arrivals after earlier revealing the club were prioritising permanent deals over loan moves this summer.
Neilson said: “We are still looking to get another defender in for the right-hand side. We brought Lewis Neilson in, he will get game time and he is a player we want to develop. We are still looking to recruit in that area as well.
“We still have a couple of areas we want to strengthen in. We are looking for a striker, a couple of guys who can play the No.10 role, plus a central midfielder. There are quite a few areas.
“The aim is to increase the squad size. We ran with a first-team group of 21 last year so we want to get that number of to 23.
"That would then allow us to bring in a few younger players who will predominantly be in the B team but will train with us during the day.”
