Private, stroking or head butting going on.. nowt for us to be bothered about... personally I thought this thread was about transfers... hey ho !
John Coleman, the Accrington Stanley manager spoke of his desire to sign Alese permanently following a loan spell at the club. He said: “If I had the opportunity to sign him on a permanent, I would have done, but West Ham didn’t want to sell him. We didn’t want to sign him on loan again — we’d be developing him for someone else. “There’s not many left-sided centre-backs and they’re in demand right now. The good thing about Aji is he is capable of playing left-back. If I had signed him on a permanent deal, I would have developed him as a full-back.
Interesting. Looks like that's the defence sorted. Hopefully Huggins isn't too far away as he can play both sides as well.
Totally mis read that. Thought the centreback were Wright Bollock and Bath Arse.... I need a holiday!
I’d say that’s the defence potentially sorted for beginning of the season (provided Hume continues to impress and gets the RB slot).
All round top person bit ties in with what other managers have said about him, particularly Paul Simpson England U19 manager, who said that after every training session he would go to all the coaches to say thank you then stay behind for extra heading practice. O9 has competition for the nicest man at the club
I'm thrilled with this signing, as much because it came out of the blue in an old school way as anything else. Alese fits the profile and looks very comfortable on the ball. He also looks like a unit. It's great that we've signed him permanently and not just on loan. That's probably our defenders sorted now. He'll be able to cover at left back until Huggins is back or play as part of a back 3. A keeper and a couple of strikers are the only "must have" signings left this summer now. Anything else will be a bonus, but if we go into the new season giving Hume, Huggins, Winchester, Matete and Diamond the chance to play plenty of games then I'll trust the managers decision on that. Parrott would be a good addition to our strikers which the leaves us the room for a "wildcard" third striker. Maybe it'll be a gamble on an injury prone Broadhead knowing that you don't need 50 games from him. Maybe it'll be an experienced punt like Lewis Grabban. I'll be fine with a calculated gamble as long as we have the 2nd striker sorted.
All for signings like Alese. I have to say I'd never heard of him, but all the signs from WHU point to him being one of their top talents and he comes with good pedigree coming with first team experience and youth international experience. These sort of lads will hopefully grow with us and give us a significant profit if/when it comes to the point that they do move on. He seems a driven kid and is coming because he wants to test himself and wants to play games, that bodes well!
Now the furore is over can we all take a minute to realise how mental that signing at 1pm was? I don’t think I can remember a single signing we have made like that, which wasn’t leaked in any way before hand. Even those loans out of the blue on transfer deadline day it comes out at least 15 mins or so before .
There was something in one of the articles I read about him earlier that was class (can't remember which one). Something along the lines of....one of the young west ham lads posted something daft on social media, the u23 manager and another member of staff seen it and went to have a word with the player. By the time they got there the young lad said, "it ok I've taken the post down, Aji has already had a word and I'm sorry". Seems to definitely have his head screwed on.
