Blackburn Rovers boss Steve Kean is confident there will shortly be new arrivals at Ewood Park. Rovers lost Phil Jones to north-west neighbours Manchester United while fellow defender Chris Samba's future has been the subject of speculation.
"Phil's moved on, that was a difficult thing because he'd only played a small amount of games for us but we appreciated he wanted to go and play Champions League football now and we're not at that stage yet. Hopefully we will be in the next three or four years but we appreciate he's moved on and we'll fight hard to keep everyone at the club," said Kean.
"Chris Samba is only a few months into a new five-year contract, we haven't had any bids and hopefully we don't get any to be honest.
"We've got three or four active bids that are actually out there and we're just waiting for confirmation those bids have been accepted. There's two or three that are quite far down the line so we're confident we'll have bodies in and we'll be adding to the squad and if we can fight off interest that you're always going to get for your players, then we're confident we can have a very good season.
"We'll be spending. We've got a very good budget and we're looking to strengthen in areas that we need to improve on from last season.
"We don't have to sell before we buy because we're trying to keep the majority of the squad together. It is a fixed budget, it's competitive and will bring in players of good quality."
Kean has targeted a top-half finish for a side that struggled against the drop last season.
"We're going to be stronger from coming through the experience of a tough period last season, towards the end we delivered and we'll be all the better for that," he said.
"From our point of view, we got seven good results out of the last nine and were four unbeaten at the end of the season so to try and continue that positivity straight into day one of pre-season was what we were aiming to do and I think that's been achieved."
