St Johnstone manager Craig Levein is open to exploring more deals in Africa, after early signs point to Aaron Essel becoming a Scottish Premiership success story.
Levein revealed that he has had another potential signing on trial but that player looks as if he’ll be snapped up by a club higher up the football food chain.
Getting Essel’s transfer over the line, though, made the hard work put into the recruitment process worthwhile.
And the fact that the 18-year-old already appears ready to make his mark on the Saints’ first team will encourage the Perth boss to keep hunting left-field bits of business.
“One of the good things about the deal with Aaron was that his club (Bechem United in Ghana) let him come over and he trained with us for the last two weeks of last season,” said Levein.
“I had a chance to assess him in our environment and compare him to our players.
“I could tell after a couple of days.
“But generally you wouldn’t invite anyone in for just a couple of days. You need to find out a wee bit more about them over a couple of weeks.
“We had another guy in just before Aaron who attracted some bigger clubs.
“I would probably try and do the same thing again if we were trying to dip into that market or other markets that I don’t really know.
“The other thing is we don’t really want to pay transfer fees so a lot of these deals are based around sell-ons and stuff like that, which is appealing.
“The money doesn’t have to come up front.”
Clark returns to the grass
Meanwhile, Levein has welcomed Nicky Clark back on to the training ground.
“Nicky has done a bit of running,” he reported. “He’s come through that without any problems.
“Nicky is an experienced player who will know where he is. He’s positive about everything.
“He came back to training in good condition. He’s been working hard over the summer.
“It was just a little bit of a set-back with this calf problem so we just need to be careful. Overloading it isn’t a good idea.”
Saints will seek to make it two wins out of two when Morton visit McDiarmid Park for the first home game of the season.
“You’re generally facing a well-drilled, fired-up opposition like Brechin were last week,” said Levein.
“They were well organised and very difficult to break down.
“We are in the very early stages of piecing together the jigsaw so winning things is the only thing that really matters for me at the moment.
“Our confidence will grow if we win this game – as it did after Brechin. It’s the be all and end all just now.”
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