Sam Hall

Tony Mowbray’s second January transfer window. A time recently associated with the offloading of a large amount of first-team players. However, bucking the trend of the past year, we actually bought a player without selling anyone first. Don’t worry though, he isn’t an unproven young player from north of the border for less than half a million- no he cost a rumoured 1.3 million pounds!

Lukas’ career has not been impressive as such, but has been steady and he has shown a strong improvement since his teenage years. Starting off at the Southampton academy alongside Theo Walcott and Gareth Bale, he went the opposite way of his team mates and dropped down to Swindon Town. It was there that he started to make his name – scoring five goals in thirty-eight appearances. This form attracted the attention of Everton, who signed him for 1 million when he was just 17. He only made 1 substitute appearance against Sunderland, yet spent different loan spells learning where the goal is. The most productive spell was up in Scotland, playing for Motherwell, where he became a bit of a late equaliser specialist. Scoring the stoppage time volley against Hibs that tied the highest scoring SPL game in history at 6-6. Search for it on YouTube … you won’t be disappointed.

He left Everton for Coventry City, signing permanently for the Sky Blues. At the Ricoh Arena, Lukas scored 9 in his first full season – including a questionable goal in a game we won 2-1 at the riverside. He used his height, his pace and his strength to find a way to goal and to bring others in to the game. He impressed for a Coventry side that included world – ahem- beating Marlon King. After King’s controversial departure to St Andrew’s Lukas became the primary striker and he has flourished, already doubling his Coventry goal tally. Now that’s when he joins us, signing initially on loan for last weekend and permanently on Monday. He’s an exciting prospect at only twenty-two; if he can carry on his development as a Championship player we could be in for a treat.

The question everybody is asking now though is, ‘How will this player fit in with our current system?’. We play openly, less direct, with less than physical players up front in Emnes and McDonald. So which player will be dropped, personally I’d like to see Emnes rested for a while – however, neither of our two main forwards have been pulling up trees recently. Should we play a 4-4-1-1, with Lukas spear-heading the attack? Or do we go with a basic front two? Also, when Bailey returns, will we play a 4-1-3-1-1, to accommodate returning players and try playing it out of defense and up to the big man to hold up? We’ll never know until it happens. Whilst the new signing won’t be playing versus his former club on Saturday due to a ‘gentlemen’s agreement’, I doubt it will be long before he is put in to the starting line-up.

Until then Juke, Good Luck and keep working hard.
Erimus.