KEITH Curle has made goalkeeper a priority position in the transfer window.

Former Shrewsbury Town and Blackburn Rovers stopper Jayson Leutwiler was among Latics’ first five summer signings last month.

But the 32-year-old has been absent from pre-season training because of his involvement in the Gold Cup with Canada.

The Canucks beat Costa Rica 2-0 in the quarter-finals last night, Leutwiler watching on from the bench, to set up a semi-final with Mexico on Friday. 

In the meantime, Curle has run the rule over a number of unnamed trialist goalkeepers in the four friendlies that Leutwiler has missed so far, with a fifth to come against Crewe Alexandra at Boundary Park tomorrow night.

Curle says Leutwiler will not miss the start of the season, which begins in less than a fortnight’s time.

But he is keen to add competition for the Swiss-born stopper before the 2021/22 campaigns begins with the visit of Newport County on August 7.

“He’ll be back,” said head coach Curle.

“He’s been keeping in regular contact with the goalkeeping coach, Steve (Collis). He’s been sending his training log so that we know.

“The only thing Jayson’s not got is that game time but we know what he’s like as an individual away from here.

“He’s a very conscientious worker.”

Curle has chopped and changed trialist goalkeepers in the friendlies but was impressed with the stopper who started in Saturday’s friendly at home to Burnley, and kept the Premier League Clarets out for almost an hour.

“I thought the lad did well today,” said Curle.

“We’ve still got Jayson to come back into the fold as well. We want another goalkeeper to add competition for that position.

“We’ve got fantastic belief in Jayson and his ability and what he brings to the squad but he knows that I’m looking to bring in competition.”

Curle is also set to make his mind up on other remaining trialists before the start of the season.

“We’ve had an open door policy for players that have been identified and we’ve had requests for us to look at them, and we’ve done that,” he explained.

“Some of them have stayed longer than others.

“That’s the policy that we wanted to adopt that whereby we didn’t say ‘no’ if we didn’t have enough information on players, we invited them in to have a look at them. And then the more we like, the longer they stay.”