KEVIN BLACKWELL has confirmed Middlesbrough’s interest in Chuba Akpom, and admitted the club need “at least two or three more players” before the transfer window closes next month.

Neil Warnock has spent the last few weeks pursuing a number of different strikers, and is continuing to work on prospective deals despite being forced into isolation after testing positive for coronavirus earlier this week.

He has held a number of discussions over Akpom, who is close to completing a £2.75m switch from Greek side PAOK Salonika. The 24-year-old helped PAOK beat Benfica in a Champions League qualifier earlier this week, but is keen to return to England, having started his career as a trainee with Arsenal.

Warnock is hoping he will become Boro’s fourth summer signing, following the addition of Grant Hall, Marcus Bettinelli and Sam Morsy, all of whom are expected to start this afternoon’s Championship home game with Bournemouth.

“There’s no doubt we are looking at players, and Chuba is definitely one of the players that we’ve been looking at,” said Blackwell, who will deputise for Warnock on the touchline at the Riverside today. “The club is trying to set the targets quite high.

“We’re looking for quality players. It’s no good getting players who are exactly the same as what you’ve got. They’ve got to be better than what you’ve got, otherwise you might as well stick with what you have.

“Why invest heavily in players that can only do what you’ve already got? That is the problem to a degree because trying to find players better than what we’ve got, and at the right price, is proving difficult. When we have identified those players, lo and behold other clubs have identified them as well.”

Boro have missed out on a succession of targets this summer, but Tuesday’s Carabao Cup defeat to Barnsley underlined the need for reinforcements ahead of the transfer deadline.

Having made seven changes to the side that started the Championship defeat at Watford, Warnock and Blackwell watched Boro’s fringe players produce performances that hardly suggested they were ready to step up on a regular basis.

There is an alarming lack of depth to the current squad, forcing Blackwell to admit that a minimum of two or three further signings are essential if the Teessiders are going to be able to withstand the inevitable challenges of a compacted Championship campaign.

“I’m sure Neil has alluded to numbers, but to me, I would say we need two or three in, maybe more, to give us that little bit of strength in depth that we need,” he said. “It’s not about just getting numbers in though, it’s about getting the quality in to make a difference.

“If you look at the team we played in midweek, we started with five players under the age of 23. We gave a few players an opportunity, and some took that opportunity, but some have made our minds up about which way we have to go. That’s why I’ve been talking about the strength of the squad. For me, that particular game highlighted in our own mind the areas we need to improve on.

“We’re disappointed we haven’t been able to get one or two more over the line because, as we’ve seen, the squad is very thin on numbers. We just need to get those numbers up, particularly when we go into the next couple of months where we have Saturday-Tuesday every week in October and November. That is a heavy, heavy workload.”

Morsy is one of the players who has arrived, and the former Wigan midfielder is expected to make his first Championship appearance for Boro this afternoon.

“It was important Sam got 70 minutes in the week,” said Blackwell. “I spoke to Peter Reid, who had Sam at Wigan with him, and Reidy couldn’t have been more highly complimentary about him. That means a lot from Reidy because he was a dogmatic midfield player, in the mould of a Sam Morsy. Reidy was no bad player.”

Middlesbrough (probable, 3-5-2): Bettinelli; Dijksteel, Hall, McNair; Spence, Saville, Morsy, Tavernier, Johnson; Fletcher, Assombalonga.