Raith Rovers: Boss Ian Murray reveals positive development in contract talks with top scorer Aidan Connolly

Former Dundee United ace Connolly, 27, who has netted 15 times in 44 appearances this season, is one of 12 Rovers stars – not including loan signings – whose current deals are due to expire on May 31 and Murray is very keen to keep the Dundee-born attacker.

"I love working with Aidan,” Murray told the Fife Free Press. “I love his attitude, he adds quality, he’s one of those boys who never misses training, doesn’t miss many games, never causes a problem contributes greatly to the team.

"I think with the initial discussions from our side we want to keep him and the initial response is that he wants to stay so it’s a case of trying to find the right deal for him.

"He’s been our top goalscorer in the last two seasons so he’s done very, very well and we need to get a package together that will allow Aidan to continue with us."

Murray is expecting a really busy end to this season and over the summer period as negotiations to keep current players at Raith and bring in new ones continue.

"We have some internal discussions on Thursday afternoon in terms of the staff,” he added. “Then after that we will make final decisions on quite a lot of things which is going to be really good, make things clear for everybody and then go into the last few weeks of the season and look to progress it a little bit.

"We are keen to keep a lot of players but we also recognise we need a wee freshen up as well in terms of the club.

"It’s a place where a lot of people have been there a while now. A lot of young players maybe need to go and play games as well.

"We need to make sure we identify the right players to come in also and make sure we can get them.

"There’s definitely boys in that squad who’ve done really well this season. The group have been tremendous in terms of their attitude.

"Of course we have good players and they might have other offers which is fine.”

Murray then assessed the current injury crisis engulfing his squad.

“We only had two outfield subs against Dundee (a 3-1 away defeat on Tuesday night),” he said. It is the worst I’ve encountered in terms of numbers but also probably in terms of players on the park in the positions they had to play as well.

"It was a real tough effort. Normally you have a few young players to fill the bench or a reserve team or a youth team but we don’t have that either so it was a challenging few days for us.

"There are pros and cons in the transfer window system, but before it came in managers could go and make a stop gap signing.

"But it’s very, very hard at this stage of the season when you have that many injuries and you’re going up against teams like Inverness and Dundee, one’s going for the play-offs and one’s going for the title.

"They are fired up and there is a lot riding on the game so it was very tough for us.”