I get the feeling that headline might be better spoken rather than written…
Shit gag or not, welcome to AFCW Tom Soares. A midfielder, who we need, and one that many have heard of as well.
By the sounds of it, we’ve been after him for a good while, and although there was plenty of expectation this window would be pretty quiet, it’s a bit out of the blue.
And in a nice way, too.
NA seems happy with getting him, as you would expect. According to the OS:
“We tried early in January to make enquiries, but it did not look like being something we could do. We then looked towards the summer for maybe a chance of getting him then if he did not sign a new deal. We would have looked to put something in short-term until then, but quite late on in the window it started looking we might have half a chance. It took a lot of hard work yesterday, but we got there and I’m absolutely delighted we’ve got him.
The rumour mill did come up with his name every so often, although it was always more of a summer signing than the one we made today.
So, what do we know about him? He’s from Reading, he’s about six foot, and his best position is central midfield. And apparently he scores a goal once every ten games.
More encouragingly, Bury fans seem upset that he’s gone. A cursory glance at their forum suggests that we’ve got somebody who tries hard (in a good way), a “great character”, and a bit versatile to boot.
Though it’s clear where we’ll play him, so we might have Bulman’s replacement already. Or at least give a bit more competition in that department.
And if nothing else, it freshens up the squad. Especially if he’s somebody who is apparently good in the dressing room too – since Akinfenwa left, we’ve lacked a little bit of that.
We don’t know how long we’ve signed him up for, and no doubt the undisclosed fee bit will grate with some. TBH, that doesn’t bother me that much, as sometimes it’s best not to know…
It does make you wonder why Bury have let him go, though. Maybe they need the cash, and we had some we were willing to spend?
As he’s from the south east, presumably he had a chance to move back down here and has now taken it. There’s only so many times you can put up with the accent…
It appears that he’s the only movement in the transfer window, as far as we’re concerned. There’s no saloon bar gossip about anyone else coming in, and just as importantly nobody on the “out” list too.
That can change of course, and we won’t properly know until after 11pm. But it looks like we’re not going to make any major changes to our squad.
It’s not a bad thing, of course. Lest we forget this time in 2013 where we had to stop the footballing equivalent of cardiac arrest – the signing of Benno might have saved the club’s mid-term future.
If Soares is the one and only news item today, it’s not been a bad window. We are fortunate that we have some yoof who can shake things up a bit, and with the amount of games in February, we’ll need them.
I expect – not hope – us to secure survival pretty straightforwardly, and a decent result at Bramall Lane this Saturday will be a good start.
Hell, even a goal will do us.
We’ve had a decent break, not just players and management but supporters too. We’ve made a little injection of fresh talent today without breaking up the squad.
I don’t expect us to make the playoffs (though I said that a lot last season…), but I do believe there’s still more than enough for it to be a decent last three months.
We’ve never really had a relaxing last third of the season for a good while. Last year spoke for itself, and we always seemed to be looking over our shoulder in previous campaigns.
We need to do things like blood more youngsters, and start making long term plans for how we want to approach next season. It could be the most important close season for a while.
Oh, and one final thing, though not AFCW related – imagine being a Brizzle Rovers fan right now, seeing your best striker leave and then come across this picture…