Introducing Our New Signings

Alan Hutton signed for the lads on deadline day and Benjani Mwaruwari signed…a day after the transfer deadline??? Nice one Brucie! Apparently our fax machine was on the blink. The computers were down. And our carrier pigeon, Wilbert, was MIA. Tremendous excuse.

What should we expect from these two players?

Alan Hutton signed for Tottenham for £9m from Rangers in the 2008 January transfer window. However in his two years at White Hart Lane he only managed to make a total of 29 appearances. He’s been blighted with injuries but hopefully they are all behind him now. He’s a Scottish international, a combative right-back who isn’t afraid of getting forward. I can imagine he’ll go straight into the Sunderland team as we’ve been struggling in that area and have been crying out for some quality. Bardsley isn’t bad defensively but he isn’t the most creative of players and struggles to offer us anything going forward.

Alan Hutton is a welcome addition.

Benjani Mwaruwari is an experienced Premiership player having played a total of 93 games for Portsmouth and Man City respectively. He’s scored 23 goals and is the Zimbabwean international captain. He signed for Man City in the 2008 January transfer window from Portsmouth for around £3.8m. Actually, he was late for that too, having missed two flights because he had fallen asleep at the airport! Subsequently he was only given the green light to move nearly a week later and signed on the 5th of February.

Benjani scored on his debut in a 2-1 win against Manchester United. At Old Trafford! What a start eh? Again, I think he’s a good signing. He’ll certainly offer Sunderland more quality going forward and with the outgoing signings of Murphy and Healy I think we are stronger for it.

Here’s Benjani in action: