Profile:

I mean, let's be honest - I'd never heard of Tamás Priskin until he came on trial. I'd never heard of his former club, Gyori ETO either, and my first thought for the "He is:" section was "Gheorghe Hagi", until I realised he was, er, Romanian.

So, before I begin the meat and drink of writing his player profile from my position of near perfect ignorance, here are ten things we know about him:

(1) He's Hungarian. Not Romanian (despite the fact that the two are adjacent).

He is twenty years old (although you know what the Eastern Europeans are like with their passports. Probably doctored it and he's really thirty-three but is having botox injections to engineer a big-money move to England).

(3) He is six-foot-one and eleven stone seven according to the official site (but six foot two and thirteen stone one according to football.co.uk so God knows what has happened to him in pre-season. Perhaps he has shrunk due to age?)

(4) He has signed from Gyġri ETO, who finished ninth out of fourteen in the Hungarian league in 2005-6 (but two other teams in that league changed their names just last season, so it is unclear how long they've been called Gyġri ETO for.)

(5) He has three caps for his country already, and a number of under-twenty-one caps (the number being at least one, and your faithful reporter's will to establish precisely how many having expired at one).

(6) It is his birthday on the twenty-seventh of September (but see (2)).

(7) We paid somewhere between £150 000 and £1m for him, depending on who you believe (but his agent is one Raymond Sparkes and a Glaswegian, so my guess is closer to the £1m figure. We Scots are canny and mean).

(8) He was rumoured to be a target for FC Koln to replace the outgoing Lukas Podolski (which would be nice if it were true, although the rule of Riley - no quote, no story - casts doubt on this).

(9) Google does not know how many games he played for Gyġri ETO (and nor do I).

(10) However, he currently has four goals and three assists in a mere smattering of pre-season games, some of which he's come off the bench for.

So, he's big (give or take an inch), in Ron Atkinson parlance "knows where the goal is" (although on reflection Ron probably wouldn't use a French word), quick enough, and is unselfish enough to set up goals even when on trial. Whether he succeeds or not remains to be seen - but Aidy's nose for a striker so far has been nothing short of excellent, he signs players with attitudes I like, and he's signing someone young, clearly talented, and with a lot to prove. Puskás may be stretching it a little, but they do both have accents in their names, and that has to count for something. Tamás will start behind Henderson and King in terms of the starting line-up, but with him and Bouazza waiting in the wings, we have healthy competition for places, and two strikers who are barely 20. He may not be the finished article yet - but he has time, he has the opportunity, and he'll have the support from the club. There will be less qualifiers in his next profile, I'd think...

Nick Grundy
Last updated: August 2006