smogblog

Good news for fans of gifted yet wayward strikers! Leroy Lita has signed a three-year contract with  Middlesbrough and will go straight into the squad to face Sheffield United on Friday. Released by Reading at the close of the 2008/09 season following a goalscoring record that had begun to tail badly, coupled with various off the field controversies, the Congolese born forward has joined with a view to replacing Mido in the side.

To give the lad his due, he has slotted together a decent scoring rate at all his clubs, passing the acid test for forwards by finding the net on average once every three games. A bit like the bloke whose place he has usurped, Lita possesses undoubted talent, and better yet is nothing like the moaning wretch we have palmed off onto Zamalek. But he’s far from perfect, as his free agent status might suggest and though the Royals were possibly hasty in parting ways with him they also had a valid point regarding his attitude and commitment issues.

Yet for gratis, who can argue? Sheffield United were willing to pay a seven-figure sum for his services back in January, but Lita turned down their overtures and it’s flattering to think he sees the Riverside as a better bet than Bramall Lane. In his own words:

‘I’m raring to go. I haven’t enjoyed the last two seasons one bit but this is a fresh start and I’m excited about the challenge. Other clubs were interested in signing me but there was only one place I wanted to go and that was Middlesbrough. The manager has been after me for about a year; it’s great to feel wanted. I aim to repay him for his faith in me with goals.’

You can’t say fairer than that, and in celebrating Lita’s arrival the club also confirmed that Mido has definitely returned to Cairo, some days after everyone already knew what was going on. As it happens, the EGP4m figure quoted by Zamalek for a year’s worth of sulky Egyptian appears to be wide of the mark, Boro letting him go for a lot less than that and just being grateful to get him off the payroll and out of the Riverside.

We’re still expected to have another striker on the books before too long. The likely odds are on Rob Hulse being the man to tick Gareth’s boxes, and when you read comments like the one on the official West Brom website about him being ‘a tall, powerful forward’ you can see why the interest is there. Hulse was Derby’s player of the year in 2008/09 after racking up 18 goals for a struggling side, which is no mean achievement. Only a two-year period at Bramall Lane prior to joining Derby blotted his copybook. He once went an entire season without finding the net, zero goals in 25 matches, which at least is the kind of form that would make him fit right in with our boys.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 3rd, 2009 at 10:18 pm and is filed under Tittle tattle, Transfer News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.