George Burley is starting to plan for life without Chris Baird and admits his player of the season will leave a big void to fill.

Saints have accepted a £3m offer from newly-promoted Premiership side Sunderland for the Northern Ireland international defender, who handed in a transfer request after initial interest from Fulham.

Though Baird trained with Saints yesterday, he is expected to tie up the formalities today.

Baird's departure will leave Burley with just FIVE recognised defenders for next season - Alexander Ostlund, Claus Lundkevam, Darren Powell, Pele and Chris Makin - and that is obviously well short of the cover required.

However, with Saints' current financial position, most of the money from the Baird sale is unlikely to come back Burley's way - making replacing a player of his quality even harder.

He said: "I don't want Chris to leave but at the end of the day financially maybe we're not in a position to turn it down. It was a fair offer, a good offer.

"It will be a big hole in my defence but we will be looking to try and plug it.

"We need to add players to the squad, no doubt about that.

"Unfortunately this season we've got to cut our cloth accordingly."

For full story see today's Daily Echo.