Kean confesses to Singh influence

Steve Kean has this morning confessed that he has been given Rovers three deadline day signings on the back of Global Advisor Shebby Singh’s recommendation.

Rovers bagged the signatures of Polish goalkeeper Grzegorz Sandomierski, Portuguese defender Nuno Henrique and his fellow countryman Diogo Rosado on deadline day last Friday but the Rovers boss has today confessed that he has not seen any of these players live.

Shebby Singh has been credited with their captures and the responsibility that goes with it.

Passing the buck? Patting his colleague on the back? Or simply commenting honestly on the transfer policy? You decide…

Kean told BBC Radio – ‘They’re in the club now and we can have a real look at them, I’ve not seen them play live.

‘Shebby Singh was very excited about them coming here and was telling me how good they were. We feel as though we can improve any player that comes to the club and also integrate them as quickly as possible.

It seems like Shebby is something of an all-rounder with a scouting mission undertaken to assess potential signings seemingly underlining the influence the former TV pundit has at the club now.

Kean continued – ‘Shebby went to see Nuno Henrique play for Academica on the Friday before we played Leicester and told me he played very well.

‘The reports we have for Greg, who has played a lot of first-team football, are good but I’ve not seen him play myself.’

Rovers have been very active this summer with an unexpected amount of incoming transfers off the back of an early summer warning of mass exodus.

However, the club has been criticised in some quarters for a very heavily weighted Portuguese transfer policy that has seen 6 of the summer’s 12 signings come from the country to the west of Spain. But Kean is confident they will adapt quickly to the English game.

‘These players have been identified by Shebby and he’s been very excited about the technical abilities of these players, you can’t have too many good players.’

‘I would like to work with them really intensely over the next couple of weeks because we all know how difficult it is.

‘We’ve seen it with some players coming from foreign countries before, even with senior players like Michel Salgado when we had him here.
‘We need to push them as quickly as possible into the intensity that we train, which I know is different to how they train abroad.

‘It will hit them between the eyes straight away, but the sooner they can get involved with it, the better. If they show the signs that they can compete straight away, they’ll get thrown in.’