Coyle close to first signing

Last updated : 24 January 2008 By Tony Scholes
"I would certainly hope to get closure on that one today, one way or the other," he said. "It has dragged on longer than it should have and I have to say that it is through no fault of our ours. It has been frustrating, but we have been patient and respectful of the club involved."

Coyle continued: "I am expecting to hear something back on a couple of things by lunchtime, and we remain actively in pursuit of a few players. Over the course of the last fortnight we have made bids of over £2 million for three or four different players.

"Some of those bids are still with the respective clubs and others we have been told we would need to improve those offers, which we have not done at this point. We will not be held to ransom because of the January transfer window. We have a certain valuation of players ad we are prepared to pay them but not be hauled over the coals to pay more.

Meanwhile Operational Director Brendan Flood has confirmed we won't over stretch ourselves. He said today: "The key thing to remember is the transfer window involves a desire to forget everything that's been done over the past 12 months and focus on an amount of money that gets spent in this month,

"Barry and I are committed guys and we're continuing to make further commitments to the club, and I think everyone can see that we are getting a better squad and we're not going to do a QPR. It's a medium to long-term plan to get Burnley established one day in the Premier League.

"Charlton are probably fairly ruthless because they've got the parachute money to play with. They must have a less focused attitude on how they buy players. We buy them with a view to keep them for the length of the contract. We can't afford to make short-term decisions like that.

"No-one said we were going to go up this year. We're going to compete to go up but we never said that's what we expect. What we're doing is getting a better squad year on year.And what we can promise is that we're doing our best and it will get better every season."