Dundee United have taken Swedish centre back Marcus Trnstrand on trial at Tannadice.
The 23-year-old, who is a free agent after leaving previous club Hammarby, trained with the United squad at St Andrews yesterday, with manager Jackie McNamara keen to bolster his defensive options after Gavin Gunning was ruled out for the rest of the season.
A former Swedish international at under 17, under 19 and under 21 level, Trnstrand could potentially fit the bill.
“We’ll have a wee look at him,” McNamara said.
“The difficult thing is trying to get a game to have a look at him in, as I’ve not seen much of him. With Gavin getting injured, I think we’re a bit short at the back.
“The window’s shut, there’s not a lot we can do, but we’ll have a look.”
Following their heavy 6-2 defeat at the hands of Celtic at the weekend, McNamara is looking for an appropriate reaction when they head to Motherwell in the rearranged game on Tuesday.
“You’ve got to respond to it. These things happen and we know it’s not going to be plain sailing,” he said.
“There’s a lot of work to be done but the lads have to learn from it. These little things like marking from corners, doing your job properly and switching on defensively if you are not at it then teams like Celtic will punish you.”
“The players are hurting and it’s about pride as well. We’ll take the positives from the Celtic game, like the fact we created a few chances and we scored a couple of goals.
“It gives me a lot of encouragement that we’ve got lads there who can go and hurt teams, as we know, but we’ve got to concentrate on the defensive side as well.
“I was disappointed more than anything.
“We’ve gone there, scored a couple of goals and missed a penalty, but watching it back, we get the goal and we’re celebrating and they go and hit one up the park and get a corner and score from it.
“It’s disappointing at any level. Don’t get me wrong I thought Celtic were good on the day but we didn’t help with some of our defending.”
McNamara is determined to improve that defensive record.
“It’s not anything I didn’t know coming in here,” he said.
“The goal tally for the league was -4 when we came in and the three games I’ve been here we’ve scored eight and conceded seven six in one game. We should be entertaining to watch but we should be able to defend a lot better than what we are.
“It’s fair enough if you are getting carved open or guys with ability beating your defenders, but not just scoring a header from a corner. They are cheap goals to lose.”
The Steelmen are coming off the back of a morale-boosting 3-0 win over Inverness and the United boss is under no illusions about the size of the task in hand.
McNamara concluded: “Motherwell are going well and Stuart McCall is doing a fantastic job there.
“They had a great result at the weekend so they’ll be confident. But we need to go there and make sure we stand up and be counted.”