THREE trialists who featured in the Pars’ pre-season opener at the weekend have been given another chance to impress boss Allan Johnston.

The unnamed trio – although two are believed to be Annan Athletic’s 22-year-old midfielder Josh Todd and former Carlisle United striker Mark Beck – each came off the bench during Saturday’s closed-door game with Patrick Thistle and could be in line to play a part in this weekend’s match at Livingston.

Although he said that the trialists “did well” in the 4-3 defeat, Johnston told Press Sport that it was too early to decide whether he will take his interest any further and confirmed that more players will arrive at East End in the next few weeks for training.

Ahead of Wednesday's 1-1 draw with Alloa Athletic, in which the three trialists played, he commented: “You’re always going to have trialists at this time of year and we’ll probably have a few more over the next few weeks.

“It’s always a good chance to have a look at them because although you can see them in training, it’s not quite same until you’ve played full-size games that are competitive, so it was a worthwhile exercise.

“The three of them are back in this week – one played full back and scored a goal so that’s always good – and they did well but it’s really early because they only played a part of the game.

“We’re a long way off making final decisions but there’s a few games coming up, so we’ll decide if they’re maybe going to play part of any of those.

“We’ve just got to be patient.

“There’s no point diving in and taking players for the sake of it.

“Players will go to other teams on trial who are maybe in a higher division but they’re not all going to get contracts, so there’ll be loads of people available.

“You start to find out those who are still available or maybe could be on loan, so we’ll keep trying.”

Johnston confirmed that there has been no further progress on the futures of out-of-contract pair Faissal El Bakhtaoui and PJ Crossan - although Celtic are reportedly closing in on a deal to take the latter to Parkhead - but said he was happy with how his squad were shaping up ahead of their Betfred Cup opener with Arbroath on July 19.

Summer signings Lee Ashcroft, Nat Wedderburn and Gavin Reilly all made their debuts against Thistle while Callum Fordyce joined in with possession work for the first time last week.

Johnston added: “It was a really good workout against a strong Partick Thistle team and to score three goals from open play is really good.

“We changed about five players at half-time and then the rest of them after 55 minutes, so the boys did really well and we’re going to build it up as we go.

“There’s probably some wee bits we can work on defensively and in terms of our fitness and touch but there were a lot of positives.

“There was a lot of really good attacking play and all three of the new players settled in well.

“Lee was starting a new partnership with Ben (Richards-Everton) and I think that the two of them, as we work on it a bit more, will be a really good partnership.

“Nat settled in there no problem alongside Andy Geggan and then you look at Gav up front; I think he and Moff (Michael Moffat) look a really good partnership already.

“All the young boys played 45 minutes or just less than that, so everybody’s played part of the game.

“We’ve got plenty of time to work on things but we’re certainly going in the right direction.

“It would be nice to have your whole squad in place but we’ve got good players here just now.

“We’ve got the majority in so we can be patient and wait for the right ones.”

The Pars will take on Hearts in a pre-season game on July 9 at East End Park, while tomorrow they face Livingston at the Tony Macaroni Arena.

The match kicks off at 3pm and admission costs £10 for adults and £5 for concessions.