By Andrew Penman
Russell Martin has promised to add more firepower to his Swansea City squad in the final few days of the transfer window.
The Swans head coach wants to bring in more competition for 13-goal top scorer Joel Piroe.
Martin’s side have recovered well from a poor run of results to respond with a hard-earned draw at Huddersfield, followed by last weekend’s 1-0 win over Preston but his young team have scored only 28 times in 24 Championship matches.
Wing-back Ryan Manning earned the Swans all three points against Preston with a stunning long-range strike six minutes into the second half.
“I think Joel needs a hand,” said Martin.
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“He’s responsible for a lot of our goals and he’s a big threat for us but we have a lot of games coming up and we need to make sure we’ve got enough armoury to give us the option to go to two up top so it’s probably an area that we’ll look at.
“I think it [bench] needs to be stronger in certain areas,” he added.
“I think we are a very young team, which is no problem. I think the way they managed the second half shows we’re a young team at times with some decision making.
“The problem is, I think the bench is good, but outside that we’re very much down to bare bones. We just need to add a couple more in to help us.
“We’ll do everything we can to strengthen. We need a little bit of help in a few areas.”
Sunderland striker Ross Stewart has been linked with a move to Swansea.
The 25-year-old Scot has hit 18 goals for the League One club this season.
Martin has so far signed goalkeeper Andy Fisher, wing-back Cyrus Christie and midfielder Hannes Wolf and added: “The window goes mental in the last week for some strange reason.
“It’s football. Everyone leaves it really late and injuries etc.
“We’ll just have to wait and see, but we’re in a position now to go and get players in the positions that we want.
“We just don’t want to bring them in for the sake of it, we’ll try to get the right ones and sometimes that takes a bit of time.”