DANNY Cowley admits Colchester United are likely to have to generate funds to land their January transfer window targets.
The U’s will aim to strengthen their squad when the window opens in five weeks’ time, as they look to launch a bid for a top-seven finish in League Two.
Colchester worked from a more restricted transfer budget in the summer window, in the backdrop of owner and chairman Robbie Cowling’s intention to sell the club.
Colchester youngsters make Premier League Cup progress
And U’s head coach Cowley believes it will be a similar scenario again, once the winter window opens on January 1.
Cowley said: “We’re working all the time.
“We know what we would like and we know what we need.
“We’ve probably got to create some funds to be able to get to what we want, so we’ll keep working.
“Robbie is still actively looking to sell the club.
“I think he’s been really open and honest, with his feelings with regards to that and in the meantime, he’s still really selflessly funding the club.
“We know what we want – before we get what we want, we have to try to create the finance so we will try to be agile.”
Colchester are currently working without a sporting director but first team coach and analyst Jon Duckett is now also operating as the club’s head of recruitment.
Cowley added: “We always like to be mean and lean as a staff and support team, so it’s always a job and a half really and Jon is still with us on matchdays.
The intervention that helped Harry Anderson play his part in U’s win
“A lot of recruitment now, especially when you’re quite a small recruitment team, is done on the screen anyway.
“If you’ve only got a small amount of staff in recruitment, you can send them to live scouting but there’s only so much live scouting you can do.
“You could go to watch a game on a Saturday or a Tuesday night but that’s one game and 22 players where probably in that seven or eight-hour window, when you’ve allowed time to get there, watch the game and then travel home from the game, you can see a lot of players on screen and then the last bit of our recruitment is then the live scouting.
“That’s when we’ve really got down the line and we’ve really filtered and narrowed down the targets that Nicky and I try to go out and we never sign anyone without seeing them with our own eyes.
“We try to work to that kind of strategy.”
