Before we go on – hands up if you got the Creedence Clearwater Revival reference?
No? Oh, here you are…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAVhKjsImeI&feature=kp
Anyway, the reason for such an obscure reference is that we’ve finally signed the third striker – enter one Adebayo Azeez.
Bayo. Bayou. Geddit? Please yourself…
So, that’s two strikers we’ve got with the initials AA, with the same first name, which if nothing else will make SW19 reports next season even more confusing.
Unless our new AA is known as Ade, which makes my gag above as irrelevant as a pre-match meal for Luis Suarez for the next four months.
What do we know about Azeez? He’s 20, he’s 6 foot, and interestingly enough he’s had four different clubs as a loanee since 2012. And last season, he scored five goals, which would automatically put him in the top three of strikers for us last season.
Presumably he knows he will be the third choice striker behind the Twin Towers, and I guess that’s why NA has gone with him. Indeed, these comments do make it sound our manager has finally learned something:
“We are going to play two strikers whenever we can next season and if we’re going to do that then Ade gives us a great option with his pace.
Although on second reading, “whenever we can” doesn’t sound too promising. Two decent strikers, a third one today, and we may not play two of them…?
At least now the amount we’re looking to get in has been whittled down to three. I would assume that we’re now done with the strikeforce, as we have AA, Azeez, Tubbsy and – assuming he makes the grade – Oakley.
Pre-season training is a mere matter of days away*, so I would expect two more to come in before then. Again, NA seems pretty confident of more cheesy photos on the OS before long, although it does seems as though we’ll get a triallist or two on show.
* – as an aside, I see some other sides have been back at pre-season training this week. Any reason why we’re a bit later than them?
Which I don’t think is such a bad thing. Pre-seasons aren’t just for fitness, they’re also for ironing out any problems in the squad and indeed, finding a triallist or two is worth gambling on.
Last season, we had Rhys Weston on trial, although as we now know he was found not guilty of being a defender. My guess is that the ones we bring in will be Azeez types, with half an eye on building them up in the u21s.
In the past, there have undoubtedly been triallists who could have done well with us if we had a u21 setup to bring them on more, and with luck we won’t have any slipping through the net this time.
This all said, I don’t expect too many triallists. I had a cursory glance at our pre-season fixture list, and there’s only six of them. Given there’s a whole squad that needs to be brought up to speed, you can’t start denying full squad members game time for some spotty herbert from Catford.
And one of those PSFs is in doubt – god knows what’s going on at Salisbury, although it’s currently still on at time of writing. I hope we have a backup plan in place.
Will we get another Friday/Saturday one added, a la Havant/Shots? Indeed, are we going to get any u21 ones announced?
Speaking of our yoof, we got some good news this week that we’ve now got Category 3 status confirmed. The pass mark was 50% and we got 57%, which does at least give us plenty of scope to improve.
What does being Category Three entail? Apart from sounding like a hurricane? The club never give this sort of info out, for some reason, but there was this from Watford a couple of seasons ago.
Also, there’s this rather lengthy document by the Football League. If you have a spare year, somebody read it up and post the relative bits please – one syllable words only…