ALI Crawford is set to sign on loan for St Johnstone until January.

The Wanderers midfielder has not featured for the club since January and spent the second half of last season on loan with Tranmere Rovers.

Crawford became Ian Evatt’s first signing last summer, re-joining the club on a two-year deal, but struggled to replicate the form he had shown the previous year in League One.

The Scot featured 24 times for Wanderers last season, scoring one goal in the 2-1 win at Stevenage.

He finished off the campaign by reuniting with Keith Hill at Tranmere but struggled to hold down a regular spot, starting just four games.

Reports north of the border claim the 30-year-old midfielder is now due to stay at McDiarmid Park until the New Year, when the Scottish Premiership side will have an option to extend the deal.

Ian Evatt was keen to offload Crawford in order to make space for another arrival on transfer deadline day.

Brandon Comley is also available for transfer but, at present, Wanderers have had no firm offers for his services.

Evatt said last week that he was not under financial pressure to move Crawford and Comley on – and also had the option of not registering them for league football in order to make way for new signings.

“It isn’t all down to finance,” he said. “It’s more down to me wanting this group and this club and this team, as well as the owner, to be sustainable. We don’t want to over-spend, we don’t want to live beyond our means.

“We’ve got a sensible budget, it’s a competitive budget, and we’ll stick to it and if that means one in, one out, then we’ll do the best we can to let someone go and get some games and bring someone in who we feel can compete better with our first team players - that’s the reality of football.

“We can leave players out of the squad and not register them, so it’s not necessarily a case of balancing numbers.

“I have responsibility as the manager of this football club to keep it sustainable and not overspend and live within our means. That’s what I will do. I will never ever put this club under any sort of pressure in terms of overspending and recruiting more than we should and spending more on players than we actually should.

“This is about the bigger picture for Bolton and I want to be part of that bigger picture and it requires me to be responsible in our recruitment and make sure we do our due diligence to live within our means.”