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Alex Rae Latest Signings Update


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Fair enough.

Seems unlikely.

It's definitely the kind of player Rae would be looking at - not playing regularly in the top flight, with a decent championship record - but his contact is a problem yeah. In saying that, Ross County seem to have plenty of cash, wee payoff wouldn't be out of the question.

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AR on OS ....

Earlier today St Mirren Football Club was delighted to announce the signing of defender Ben Gordon on a one-year contract. Manager Alex Rae spoke to saintmirren.net on a range of subjects but started out by discussing the signing of Gordon. He said: “It’s good to have him on board, he’s been a consistent performer over the last three years at this level so he brings in experience and we’re looking forward to working with him.

“He’s a big lad and we feel like we need dominant centre halves. We have Andy Webster, Jack Baird and now Ben. We can also put Jason Naismith in at centre half and Gary Irvine so from that point of view we’re relatively comfortable and have a good bit of experience through the backline.”

The manager was also pleased with the signing of Kyle Hutton and the strength in that area of the park. He said: “We’ve added Kyle Hutton on the back of securing Rocco [Quinn] so we’re pleased from that point of view as well. I saw Hutton play several times last year and he’s developing into a good midfielder – he can get on the ball, he can play, he’s intelligent, has a good presence and a good understanding of the game so he’ll complement what we’ve already got in Rocco and Stevie Mallan.”

He went on to discuss the return of striker David Clarkson who signed a one-year deal at the club after having enjoyed a loan spell from January until the end of the season. The Saints manager admitted that it was a priority to bring David back to the club: “We always wanted to get Clarky signed up sooner rather than later. He had to go back to Motherwell for the last couple of weeks because their season was longer than ours. We were in constant dialogue with him to see if we could get him back on board.

“One of the key things for me as a manager is a player’s character and that their day-to-day work ethic is important so we have a good tempo at training and we have good standards and Clarky brings that. I believe we can actually enhance Clarky, he had a few knocks last year and didn’t get a lot of games with Motherwell at the beginning of the season so with a good pre-season on top of the close season programme we’ve given him we’re expecting him to come back flying, as we are of all the players.”

The manager has been hard at work as he continues to try and add to his squad for the upcoming Ladbrokes Championship season and is hopeful that there will be more transfer news next week: “I met a couple of agents earlier in the week and we’ve agreed, in principle, with someone but it’ll probably be early-to-middle of next week before we can get that over the line and we just hope that there’s no contact from anyone else so we can get that one done and dusted and hopefully that’ll leave us scope for another three or four players to complement what we already have. I feel as if we have to go with a smaller squad but with better quality, but we’ll have to assess that in terms of what is available”

When asked what areas he was looking to strengthen he said: “We’re looking for a left-side player and we’re also looking for some strikers. I know [Calum] Gallagher can play up there but Clarky is the only recognisable striker at the club as such so we have a wee bit of work to do in that department. We also need a second goalkeeper but we’re actively looking at that at the moment.”

Alex also discussed the Betfred Cup in which the Saints were drawn against Hamilton Academical, Livingston, Ayr United and Edinburgh City and how that will affect preparations for the upcoming season. He said: “I’m interested to see how it all pans out. I wanted to get three games under our belts prior to the first cup game. In an ideal pre-season you would do five or six games just to get the players up to speed but because of this competition you can’t five or six friendlies then four cup games because you’ll have played 10 games before you’ve kicked a ball in the league and it becomes a long slog.

“We’ll get the three games under our belt, play a few bounce matches between the personnel that we have at the club and use the first couple of cup games as part of the pre-season preparations but with an element of competitiveness because when we go into these games we want to win them.”

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Good wee update.

Like the way Rae is going about his business.

Building the spine of the team.

Webster Gordon

Quinn Hutton

Clarkson

Experienced. Throw in the likes of Baird (who will improve and not have as much pressure on him this season) and Mallan, it looks like a good mix of experience with young players.

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The shopping list seems fair enough although there should perhaps be another midfielder on it - we only have three central mids at the moment and Gallagher is the only right winger. Not sure where McLear and McAllister slot into that right enough.

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The shopping list seems fair enough although there should perhaps be another midfielder on it - we only have three central mids at the moment and Gallagher is the only right winger. Not sure where McLear and McAllister slot into that right enough.

Ultimately there will be deficiencies in the playing squad but AR has a full close season to assess where he can take chances on youth. The attacking midfield is generally where you can best speculate on the internal promotions.

Edited by stlucifer
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