St Mirren boss Jim Goodwin has been pleasantly surprised by the condition of new signing Collin Quaner.
The forward signed last Friday five months after leaving his previous club, Huddersfield.
The 29-year-old has begun training this week after keeping fit with Schalke in recent months and the German is set to make his debut in Saturday’s Scottish Premiership clash with St Johnstone.
“He’s not far away at all and I’m absolutely delighted,” Goodwin said.
“I was just speaking to a couple of the staff there after training and we are all really pleasantly surprised at what great condition he is in.
“Collin is in constant dialogue with the sports scientist to make sure we are not asking too much of him but he looks really sharp at the moment.”
Goodwin signed a striker last January, Seifedin Chabbi, but had to wait four weeks to play him and he did not start a game before the suspension of football.
The Irishman said: “It is probably going to take him a couple of weeks to get him up to where we need him to be, but we signed a player last January and when he came in initially we were hoping he was going to be fitter than what he was.
“We were taken aback by how much work we had to do with him to get him up to speed.
“But Collin is a completely different kettle of fish, a proper professional. You can see he has been working hard over the past five or six months when he hasn’t had a club and he is in great condition.
“So hopefully we will get Collin to make his debut at the weekend.”
Quaner signed at the same time as Scotland striker Eamonn Brophy, who arrived from Kilmarnock, and Goodwin now has attacking options to help Jon Obika and Lee Erwin.
“I think we have the fourth best defensive record in the league but offensively we are one of the poorer teams,” he said.
“Collectively as a unit we need to do better when we get into the final third, but our main aim is to work the goalkeeper more.
“We are having more shots than most teams, we are getting into the opposition box more than the majority of teams, but we are not putting the ball in the net enough.
“Defensively, I’m happy. If we can sort out the top end of the pitch then all of a sudden we become a very good team.”
