Peter Ramage is an interesting signing. He’s been injured for much of the season and hasn’t featured an awful lot for Newcastle in his time there. From what I’ve seen of him, I don’t think he’s quite good enough for the Premiership but he’s certainly going to be a good player in the Championship. If he can keep himself fit his versatility should be an asset for us and he does strengthen our squad.

The other interesting point is that he’s left the Toon in search of first-team football. I wonder if we’ve given him a guarantee of a starting space with him being an obvious direct replacement for Michael Mancienne at right-back. If that was the case, it’s interesting, especially seeing as we currently don’t have a manager in place and surely it’s his call who does and doesn’t start?

Radek Cerny’s arrival is a bigger mark of intent. Despite his age, he’s a solid goalkeeper who definitely has the ability to continue playing in the Premiership for another season, albeit perhaps with a smaller club than Spurs. He adds serious competition for Lee Camp and something tells me we’ll see a fair bit of both of them in action next season.

Ramage has signed a 3-year deal and Cerny has signed a 2-year deal, which I find interesting. It shows the club has a revised policy for contract durations since the arrivals in January. Many of the players brought in then were on 4 or 5 year contracts. I expected Ramage would have been on 4 or 5 years as he’s only 24, although 2-year’s for Cerny makes sense due to his age; he’s not young at 34 but his experience will be beneficial.

I like how we’ve made good use of the Bosman ruling so far and the speed in which we have chased the targets we’re after and got them on board. When you make announcements this early it shows that these men are first-choice targets and that’s a positive.

I’m also always pleased when the club is able to save money regardless of how rich people think we are. It’s important we continue with a sensible approach to business practices and if we do that, we’ll leave ourselves with a sound foundation to build on.

So, welcome aboard Peter and Radek and all the best in your time with us!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 13th, 2008 at 12:23 pm and is filed under blog (everthing). You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.