ST MIRREN boss Alex Rae admits he will need to build an entire team from scratch in the space of six weeks with around a dozen players expected to leave the Paisley club in the summer. League Cup-winning heroes Steven Thompson and Jim Goodwin will say their high-profile farewells following Sunday’s final match of the season against Rangers, while others like David Clarkson, Scott Agnew, Keith Watson, Stuart Carswell and Cameron Howieson are all out of contract as well.

Rae has been hampered in his recruitment drive with Saints only securing their Championship status a few weeks ago and by the fact that until recently the club did not have a scout out looking at players. He will look to add players to his soon-to-be threadbare squad in the coming weeks, aware that he won’t be able to field trialists when the reformatted League Cup gets underway in mid-July.

The Saints boss said: “I don’t want to sound pessimistic but how we do next season will depend on our recruitment over the summer. As it stands there are 10 to 12 players going out of the door so it’s who you can get to come in that will decide how you get on. As we’ve been going along we’ve been identifying players that we would like to add to the squad and wanted to get them in on a pre-contract. But we were never in that position, due to not knowing we were definitely safe until a few weeks ago.

“We’ve had a chat with the board and they’ve told me we can go again with the same budget as this year. It’s just a case of getting in players for value. A few years ago I was working as head of recruitment for MK Dons so I know how important it is to bring the right players in. Up until three weeks ago we had no scouts out actively looking for us. So I’ve got a guy now doing this for us for a small fee, expenses basically.

“I’ve also contacted folk I know in the media and ex-players to try to ask who they’ve been watching, just to get my tentacles out there. Because the season starts so early I don’t think you can play trialists in the League Cup so you have to have your squad in place by then which will make for interesting work. We’re basically looking to put a new team together in the space of about six weeks.”