TONY Mowbray remains confident of making further additions before Middlesbrough kick off their Championship campaign against Leicester City next month, but the Boro boss admits it is hard to prise players from other clubs at such an early stage of pre-season.

Mowbray missed out on one of his targets yesterday when Chelsea youngster Thorgan Hazard rejoined Belgian club Zulte Waregem for a second successive season-long loan.

The Middlesbrough manager is pursuing Chile international Eduardo Vargas, although a deal with the striker's current employers, Napoli, remains a long way off.

Nevertheless, having already added Dean Whitehead and Joszef Varga since the end of last season , Mowbray expects to have further new signings in place by the time the Football League season begins on August 3.

“We're trying hard to get the players who would help our team, and we're talking to a number of clubs or players,” he said. “But with the Premier League season still six weeks away, some of those clubs aren't even back in training yet, so they're in no rush to do business fast.

“We are, and they know that, but there's a danger you pay over the odds for players you don't need to in a few weeks' time.

“We hope some new signings will come in. I know the chief executive (Neil Bausor) is working extremely hard behind the scenes to try to finalise some deals for us.

“I'd like to think there will be three or four new signings in before the window shuts. But at this moment, we formulate ideas about the way we might set up with the players we've got.”

Boro play their first domestic friendly when they travel to Morecambe tomorrow, and are hoping to add Luke Williams to the squad that spent last week in Portugal on a pre-season break.

Their interest in Vargas remains at a tentative stage, although Napoli are willing to discuss a potential season-long loan for the 23-year-old striker, who cost £12m when he moved to Italy from Universidad de Chile in 2012.

Having failed to make an impact in Naples, he has been on loan at Brazilian side Gremio since January.