ALAN STUBBS, the Hibernian manager, is hopeful of completing a deal to sign former Bournemouth and Burnley midfielder Marvin Bartley in the next 24 hours.
The 29-year-old, who was on the books of Leyton Orient last term, was shown around the capital club's East Lothian training base yesterday and contract talks are at an advanced stage.
Bartley played 28 times for Orient last term as they endured relegation from League One and opted to leave the club at the end of the season. He would become Hibs' sixth summer signing following the arrivals of Mark Oxley, Martin Boyle, James Keatings, Danny Carmichael and Antonio Reguero – and will fill the combative central midfield role vacated by Scott Robertson and Liam Craig.
Meanwhile, Hibs have been rocked by an injury blow after versatile forward Danny Handling was ruled out for at least six months. The 21-year-old was stretchered off during Tuesday evening's 3-0 friendly win over Berwick Rangers at Shielfield and subsequent scans have shown that he has suffered knee ligament damage.
He will go undergo surgery next Friday but will not kick a ball again until 2016.
"It's his ACL [anterior cruciate ligament] and it is obviously disappointing news," Stubbs lamented. "We feared the worst when it happened. We thought it was something serious and it has proved to be the case.
"The best case scenario would be the start of next year, maybe six months at the minimum."
While Stubbs is hopeful Danny Carmichael could return to training in time to be considered for next week's curtain-raiser against Rangers, fellow new signing James Keatings will miss the start of the season.
"It looks like Keatings is going to miss a few weeks," Stubbs said. "He has a slight hamstring strain. For the couple of weeks, he won't be featuring."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article