Football - Lewes v Southampton

As I write this we’ve just finalised the fourth of our pre-season signings, the midfielder Tom Davis. We’ve signed him for a club-record four-figure fee, which we helped finance with the sale of Lee Farrell to Horsham. Tom is a very talented all-round midfielder who can tackle, hold, distribute, and score the odd goal. He’s 22, which is a good age, and he’s an England international at non-league level. We signed him from St Albans in the Conference, one level above, but he’s got experience at this level too: he helped the Saints to promotion in 2005/6.

I want to say that I was sad to let Lee go, but we couldn’t guarantee him a first team place, and he wanted to play more. He’s worked very hard for the club, and we’ll miss him, but we’ve given him a helping hand, taken him out of County League football, and the experience has improved him as a player. He scored ten goals in six games on loan for Horsham last season, so they were always the team that was likely to get him. Best of luck to him.

As I said in this space last week we want to play fast-flowing attacking football this season, and we’ll be helped by the signing of Dale Binns. He’s a left winger who is extremely strong and fast and very skilful: we signed him from Stevenage, but our fans will probably remember him from his days at Cambridge City, where he was a right handful and provided a number of assists for Paul Booth. He played 20 games in the Conference last season, despite being in the same position as Mitchell Cole, one of the best non-league wingers in the business.