Boro look beyond transfer targets

Middlesbrough’s hunt for added firepower will not be confined to their three major targets.

The Teessiders lifted the lid on their summer transfer list last week when they admitted that Patrick Kluivert, Mark Viduka and Aiyegbeni Yakubu will provide the main focus of their efforts.

Kluivert’s insistence that he only wants to join a big London club, as well as Portsmouth’s efforts to tie up Yakubu’s future, may have dented – if not ended - their hopes of pulling off either deal, while they have been encouraged by claims that Viduka may be prepared to take a wage cut to facilitate a move away from crisis club Leeds.

However, with chairman Steve Gibson having announced his intention to provide manager Steve McClaren with two top-class strikers, Boro’s search has extended far beyond the Nou Camp, Elland Road and Fratton Park.

Kluivert, Viduka and Yakubu certainly do top the list, but it is a list which runs a long way further with a series of alternatives.

Alan Smith and Emile Heskey were previously targets, but their respective moves to Manchester United and Birmingham have reduced the field.

The latest striker to be linked with the Riverside Stadium is Paul Dickov, a potential signing the Press Association understands there is more than an element of truth to.

The 31-year-old Scottish international is a target for Blackburn following Leicester’s relegation to Division One, and although he may not enjoy the profile of some of Boro’s more illustrious targets, he has proved himself in the Premiership.

Boss Steve McClaren has tried hard to increase his side’s goal threat in recent seasons, recruiting Massimo Maccarone, Malcolm Christie and Michael Ricketts at a combined cost of almost £12m (€18m), but while Christie has at times looked the part in between injuries, Maccarone and Ricketts have struggled.

Joseph Job and Szilard Nemeth represent the remainder of the strikers’ union, but with none of them managing to reach double figures last season, the way forward seems clear.

New arrivals would certainly mean departures, and despite denials that crowd favourite Brazilian Juninho is on his way out, even he is not guaranteed a place in the side for the new campaign.

All six men face an anxious wait as McClaren, Gibson and chief executive Keith Lamb attempt to build for the future and a first ever European campaign.