Boss Richie Barker believes new signing Aiden O’Brien can be Crawley’s fox in the box.

O’Brien joined on loan from Millwall until the end of the season yesterday fresh from scoring twice on his Republic of Ireland Under-21 debut against Netherlands.

Barker said: “By his own admission they were both ‘striker’s goals’ which is great because we don’t score enough of those. We score some good individual and good team goals but we need to score more scrappy, opportunistic goals.

“That is an area we need to improve and Aiden is the type of player who can help us do that.”

Barker moved to bring in O’Brien, 19, after being forced to terminate Jimmy Spencer’s loan from Huddersfield due to a persistent knee injury.

He added: “Aiden was somebody we became aware of after we had sorted out Jimmy’s loan. We said we would keep an eye on him so when Jimmy couldn’t shake off his injury we were able to turn our attention to him quite quickly.

“He is by no means the finished article but he has got a fantastic work ethic and is keen to learn.”