Thomas Sandgaard breaks down how he sees summer transfer window for Charlton Athletic

Thomas Sandgaard is expecting Charlton Athletic to sign up to five permanent signings this summer.

The Addicks boss was asked about his plans for strengthening the squad during a Q&A with Charlton Athletic Supporters’ Trust earlier this week.

And Sandgaard indicated they will once again heavily utilise the loan market as well.

Charlton have six loanees in their squad and can only name five of those in a matchday 18.

The Addicks also have a number of players who are coming out of contract this summer – including the likes of Ben Purrington and Conor Washington.

Sandgaard said: “There’s some that probably won’t be re-signed, there may be some we either want to sell or loan out and there might be a few who we actually attempt to re-sign them – even though their contracts are running out. Negotiations are slowly underway.

“There will be some new signings so that we keep improving the average quality of the squad.

“I would expect somewhere between two to four, maybe five, major signings. Then on the loan side, still be in the situation where we’ll probably be trying to fill it up with fairly inexpensive but high-quality loan players.

“Maybe six [loans]. That’s one too many, but it gives us a chance to reshuffle a bit.

“It might be that one of those major signings is a very experienced player. Most of them will be looking to the future, on three or four-year contracts.”

Sandgaard was also asked about his son Martin, who was appointed director of analysis.

The US-based Dane says the club are using data to track around 12,000 players.

“He is really good with data and building systems that are like ‘woah, that was really simple’ for something most people consider really complicated,” said Sandgaard senior.

“We’ve brought in a recruiting system that comes from what some of the bigger Premier League clubs use. We’ve got some improvements off that.”

Asked for a tangible explanation of the “improvements”, Sandgaard replied: “Scott Fraser is a very good example of that. He had kind of been forgotten after he came to Ipswich. We definitely believe they just used him wrong.

“There wasn’t that much competition for him because his statistics were not there. But the way Martin analyses that, he is exactly what we wanted.

“Several of us, including me, realised that because in the last transfer window he was our number one target. He had kind of fallen off everyone’s radar.

“The way he works with Steve Gallen [director of recruiting] makes Steve’s job a lot easier. He can be a lot more focused about what agents we talk to and what players, rather than getting run over every time we get close to a transfer window.

“Steve is good at that, but his main skill is negotiating. A combination of those two is just amazing. We need Johnnie Jackson’s input and I just try to put the big picture together to make sure we keep moving in the right direction – improving the average of the whole team and make sure we don’t deviate from a more consistent playing style.

“We’ve made some improvements on the midfield and that area is most important. It’s why we brought Scott Fraser in. We got George Dobson in and he has developed. If he has players around him that are playing him better than he could even compete on a Premier League level. You might not see it today but he has just got that something.

“I’m going to focus a lot on that attacking midfield and also we’ll be looking at wing-backs rather than traditional full-backs.”