STEVE Cotterill believes pre-season panic could come to the rescue as he seeks to nail down his playing targets.

The new Clarets boss has been frustrated by delays in adding more names to the singular signing of former Ipswich defender John McGreal.

Burnley's status as a club with little cash to spend, allied to agents' demands and players' understandable hesitancy at leaping at the first offer tabled, are all conspiring to thwart Cotterill at present.

But with a return to training just around the corner for players - and supply far outstripping demand - Cotterill believes the pressure is about to be transferred to those desperate to get fixed up in time for the new season.

He said: "I am constantly speaking to players, but it is always a tricky time to nail people down.

"You are dealing with holidays, players' agents and, in some cases, the clubs involved and all those three factors slow down the whole process.

"Unless you have a shed load of money, you can't go signing players in bulk right now.

"Teams like Leeds United are signing people, but despite all their financial problems they will always be in a better position than smaller clubs to attract players.

"But if you look at the overall picture, there has been hardly any activity over the summer so far and that obviously has a knock-on effect.

"Players' contracts start ceasing at the end of June and until people start going back to, or looking for work, then it is a notoriously slow process."

Cotterill will be hoping for good news early next week on his three main targets, which include two established names and a third coming from a lower league side and described by the Burnley boss as a "calculated risk".

At present, Burnley have just 12 senior players on their books for pre-season training, which begins in just five days time.

After that, the Clarets are due to play several friendly games in this country before flying out to a summer training camp in Austria, where Turf Moor chiefs are still awaiting confirmation of two games against European opposition, one being German side Munich 1860.