The club announced three new signings today. They all played in the training match about a week ago, and it seems that the coaching staff is as impressed with them as I was.

Based on that one match, I’m most excited about Petri Vadén. He is a left-footed forward/winger, so he is definitely one of the answers to the question I posed a month ago about who will score the goals for us. Indeed, he scored the nicest goal in that training match, and was very lively throughout. Last season Vadén played in the the second team of TPV in Kolmonen (fourth tier), so he is coming down two divisions when he joins us. It is great to see that TamU-K has this kind of draw among players who definitely have other good options. Correction: Vadén has not played competitively for two full seasons; his last club is TPV/2 but not last season. The coming down two divisions comment applies to Kupiainen then.

TamU-K also signed another player who played in the second team of TPV last season. Joonas Kupiainen is a deep-lying playmaker, who also impressed in the training match. He also scored a goal. It was a lobbing shot from about 35 meters out when he caught the goalie off his line, an isolated example of his situational awareness and skill,

The third signing is Juha Kumara, who has a lot of experience in lower divisions, mainly in Vitonen where TamU-K will play next season. He comes to us from LaPro, and is expected to play either as a center back or a central midfielder. He may not be as certain to be a regular starter as the two other signings, but he certainly is one of the players who will fight for a spot in the starting lineup.

We now have ten players under contract for the 2013 season. It is of course way too early to start talking about lineups, because there will still be several signings during the off-season. However, I cannot help but think that with Innola in goal, Adeeb-Kumara-Kriikkula-Lakra as the defensive line, Suonsyrjä, Kupiainen, Heittola and Harju in the midfield and Vadén up top we already have a pretty good ten man lineup.