Blimey, that was a bit unexpected wasn’t it?
I knew we were serious about getting in an experienced centre back, but I doubt if anyone expected Ismail Yakubu. And suddenly, it seems that we’re not forever trawling around the lower reaches of non-league after all. For once, a player you’ve vaguely heard of, from a team higher up and somebody who many teams in this division would go for.
In true AFCW fashion, he was injured a lot of last season, which is why we took a long time over the medical. But if it’s true that we got him in front of some League One clubs, that’s got to be a coup. He’s at the right age (not too young, not too old) and you can bet Brett Johnson is glad he’s got somebody decent beside him.
He’s not a bad player – your editor saw him a few times over the past couple of years for Barnet, and he wasn’t their worst player. Why new boss Mark Stimson decided he was surplus is anyone’s guess, although Stimson does only ever sign non-league players. He swooped for Ricky Holmes after all, and has got rid of Yak and more than likely a decent striker in John O’Flynn. Their loss, and wouldn’t surprise me to be seeing Barnet’s name on our fixture list this time next year.
While somebody like O’Flynn will probably be out of our price range, it does show what’s out there available. Especially now – one suspects the PFA list of 400+ released players that landed on TB’s desk last weekend has issued a second volume already. Could we be seeing a couple more unexpected new faces before the trip to Haig Avenue?
Certainly it makes the whole sponsorship thing more important than ever to get right. Earlier today, some mob called thinkFolio agreed to sponsor the back of the shirts, hopefully for a significant sum of cash. This is what they do, apparently (via OS):
thinkFolio provides modelling, trade order management, compliance checks and cash management capabilities across the spectrum of asset classes, including fixed income, equities, property, commodities, cash, FX and derivatives.
Urm, right. Whatever that is. Their clients include the likes of Investec, Aegon and, er, Barings Bank. No WUM either, check that link out. I hope we’ve taken the money up front, because I don’t fancy thinkFolio coming up and letting some guy called Nick bet the entire sponsorship deal on the 3.30pm from Leopardstown.
Oh, and also according to the OS:
“the name may sound familiar to Dons fans as the company sponsored the FA Trophy 2nd Round match against Altrincham back in January of this year”.
Yes, I’m sure we remember who sponsored games from six months ago. Christ, we’re only just putting the actual games out of our collective minds. Now, if it was Wey Plastics or Crispins…
Anyway, to nobody’s surprise we’ve got the deal because somebody high up supports AFCW. This has been picked up upon before, and I’m not quite sure if that’s entirely a good thing. On the one hand, we need the money, and there are enough clever bastards at AFCW high up in various places that can get us that. On the flip side, we still don’t seem to attract those who aren’t linked (directly or indirectly) with the club. Maybe the better we do the more those will come in? One thing is certain though, we would never have got these sorts of deals if we were milling about in Conference South.
Still, more power to our bank balance, and the more Yakubus we can feasibly bring in, the better. We may be starting to look a good team after all. Before I go, needless to say I totally fucked up the fixture predictions (my cynicism got me for the Xmas/New Year fixture, guess Handy was too obvious). Though football is certainly back when you spend half your evening surfing on Trainline……