Last updated at 12:55, Tuesday, 27 July 2010

Greg Abbott is set to continue his summer signing spree by landing former Ivory Coast Under-23 international Francois Zoko.

Francois Zoko

The Carlisle United boss is set to offer the big, powerful forward a short-term deal after an impressive trial at Brunton Park.

Abbott will also speak to Sunderland boss Steve Bruce about the possibility of signing defender Jean-Yves M’voto on loan and his Burnley counterpart Brian Laws about a temporary deal for another trialist Kevin Long.

Zoko returned to his home in France after his eye-catching display in Friday’s 3-0 friendly win over Darlington and Abbott is now speaking to the player’s agent to thrash out a deal.

The Blues boss said: “There is some work to be done on whether we agree six months or 12 months.

“I would like to take him for longer because he looks like someone who can give us something different.

“We like him and he really likes being around us.

“He has wanted to be here, which is massively important, he enjoys his football – and you could see that against Darlington. He’s going to get better the fitter he gets, but I thought he put in a really decent performance against Darlington. We’ve had him for three weeks and he has worked harder and harder and harder.

“The amount of times he tracked back and won the ball back against Darlington was excellent even though he’s a forward thinking player with real quality. He’s a big, strong boy, but we need to get him fitter and quicker. He has explosive pace over short distances and quality on the ball.

“He is going to fit into the side with his quality, no problem. I think he’s a forward but he can do a number of jobs. Looking at Gary Madine, Craig Curran, Jason Price and Zoko, I’ll be disappointed if there aren’t goals there.”

Zoko got the chance to get to know his new team-mates on a five-day training camp in Leicestershire last week, but has had to return to France to collect more belongings.

He misses tomorrow night’s friendly against Falkirk and it is unclear if he will be back in time for Thursday’s behind-closed-doors friendly with Middlesbrough.

Abbott is also taking a look at three other trialists, with former Villareal attacking midfielders Jose Maria Cases and Edgar Chumillas Lopez arriving at the club, along with former Spurs and Cheltenham Town midfielder David Hutton.

But his top priority is signing a stop-gap defender to replace Danny Livesey, who faces three months on the sidelines with a groin injury, and he will try to sign either Long or M’voto on a loan deal.

Abbott said: “The Burnley people have been away in Singapore and the Sunderland people have been in Portugal so we haven’t had any point of contact.

“I need to find out people’s thoughts on certain things and hopefully in the next couple of days we will have a clearer picture.”

First published at 11:27, Tuesday, 27 July 2010
Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk