DEADLINE day is almost upon us. That time of the season has become a bit of a stressful time for Burnley fans.

Starved of any meaningful activity for such a long time, we seem to live through a perennial cycle of hope, expectation, panic, disappointment and acceptance. Then ask Sean Dyche to pull another rabbit out of the hat.

The lack of depth in the Burnley squad is well documented. So when asked the question “what do we need to buy before Monday’s deadline?” it is easy to default to the “everything” answer. Analyse a little further and you can probably narrow this down to three key positions: a central midfielder, a centre forward and a right-sided winger. 

The potential signings of Wolfsburg's Wout Weghorst and Dinamo Zagreb’s Mislav Orsic fill two of those positions. And to put it bluntly, it just feels very nice to have legitimate transfer activity to get excited about. 

Get those two over the line and we can probably live without a central midfielder. Part of the struggle so far this season has been the gap left when Westwood and Brownhill have pushed forward in a hope to try and create at least something for our strikers. Which in turn has left our defenders horribly exposed.

Fill that team with Orsic, Cornet, McNeil and Weghorst and direct them to lead the attack, and Westwood and Brownhill can just sit a little deeper and help out at the back.

A few fans have suggested that another late bid for Aaron Ramsey shouldn't be off the cards. Initial suggestions were that he had dismissed a move to Turf out of hand, but perhaps he is just holding out for a 'bigger’ club?

As my colleague on the NNN podcast said this week, if Monday comes around and that offer has not materialised, surely half a season in the shop window at Burnley has to be better than a seat on the bench at Juve. Especially if he has ambitions for one final World Cup campaign with Wales. 

Andy Caroll is another rumour that refuses to go away. My view? A short-term contract as cover will do us no harm whatsoever. He just can’t be our only signing.

We have just a few days left to sweat this out with Alan Pace and ALK. I would still like three, but after the previous four or five transfer windows, one would do!

UTC