Ross County assistant manager Billy Dodds believes midfielder Stewart Murdoch will thrive with the Staggies.
Dodds has been a long-term admirer of the former Fleetwood Town and Falkirk player, who joined the Dingwall side on a free transfer last week.
The 25-year-old struggled to establish himself in the first team at Fleetwood but Dodds says Murdoch is capable of becoming a regular starter at Ross County.
He said: “We lost Martin Woods and he did a great job for us. He was missing his son and needed to be closer to him.
“Stewart is a winner. He’s got athleticism and he’s what you’d call a modern professional in that he’s a tough-tackling midfielder who will give the ball to the wide players.
“I’ve known of him since he was a young lad and watched him at exit trials when Falkirk were thinking of releasing him but ended up keeping him.
“I kept my eye on him and told Gordon Chisholm to sign him for Queen of the South. Jim McIntyre and I have watched him progress through his career.
“We’ve kept an eye on his progress because he was a young boy at Falkirk.
“He’s been at Fleetwood and we spoke to his ex-manager who said he was unlucky not be in the team, he was performing that well. We’d done our homework on him and we knew what we were getting.
“The experience he’s got now is going to make him so much better. I liked him and admired him but he’s so much better now.
“He looks after himself. He’s into sport science, eats the right way, lives the right way and you’ll see that with his build.”
Dodds, meanwhile, says he and manager McIntyre are loving life at Victoria Park and can’t wait for the new season to get under way.
He added: “It’s enjoyable. We said that when it wasn’t going the way we wanted to, there were signs of improvement.
“We both knew it was turning but it was going to take a bit longer than we expected.
“People were asking if we enjoyed the job – we loved it right from the start. With staying up the job got done and there were great scenes at the end of the season.
“We want to kick on from that now.”