Ally Robertson: A promising start – now some firepower

We have good attacking players I’d like us to keep hold of and it’s hard to judge how our forward line will look until the transfer deadline in September.

It would be great to get a more-experienced frontman on a permanent deal, but if we can’t afford to do that then we could go down the loan route for a striker, but one ready to play for us.

Josh Maja came in last summer but we haven’t really seen him yet because of his injury-disrupted first season. I have confidence in the gaffer to build a squad together.

I think if we can get Dike fully fit as soon as possible, we have Maja as well who didn’t play too much and can hopefully kick on. Fellows played really well in the second half of the season – they will help give us a chance to do well.

Having said that, we start the season with some tough games, so we’ll have to be right at it.

Ousmane Diakite and Torbjorn Heggem were two surprise signings from Austria and Norway, respectively. Both have gone down really well and I’m intrigued to see how they do for us. Whoever else we bring in the manager has seen them and he has backed that. We will have to see how they get on when we watch them in action early in the season.

I remember when we signed Thomas-Asante from Salford in League Two and everybody wondered ‘how on earth is he?’ but he fitted in and did great.

We’ve signed Diakite and now Heggem and those arrivals keep supporters uplifted as they are seeing the squad worked on and hopefully improved. Some signings from overseas have also reminded fans of a previous era, when new boys did well for us. These players will come in and want to then prove they are good enough to play in England, in the Premier League by performing well for us in the Championship.

Supporters just want to see new faces. They just want to see the club looking to do things, especially looking far and wide.

I think what we can do on loan closer to the deadline could be the thing that is really decisive.

If we can get two or three strong players on loan, some attackers, we could look like a real force in forward areas.

It was great news to see Alex Mowatt and Kyle Bartley agree new contracts at the start of this week.

Midfielder Mowatt and defender Bartley were regulars last season and both performed really well. As well as that, they are really good for our dressing room.

They are experienced players and play an important role to the younger and newer players in the squad. Those kind of characters can help hold things together. We want a team that fights for each other.

Bartley is such a dominant defender physically and we’ve added Heggem to the backline who is 6ft 3in himself, so he will add to that aerial prowess we have. That was good to see with Kipre set to leave.