Bolton officially announced their second new signing of the summer yesterday, with the long-awaited arrival of Antoni Sarcevic.
Like fellow recruit Eoin Doyle, Sarcevic joined having won promotion from League Two last season. The midfielder was Plymouth Argyle’s Player of the Year, having reached double figures in terms of goals from midfield. However, Sarcevic, who has a track record of winning promotion from this division, opted to leave Home Park, and move back to his native North West, down at Argyle he was known a bit flippantly as the ‘Manchester Messi’ – probably should beware that sort of moniker as the ‘Turkish Messi’ we signed a couple of years ago didn’t really work out.
Anyway, enough of that. What should we expect of Sarcevic? A nice all-round midfielder it seems. The Messi comparison is probably wrong, to be honest, first of all, he’s likely to be a central midfielder, and he’s probably as tenacious as he is technical. He’ll run from deep and likely pop up with a few goals, as his record showed at Plymouth last season, in fact he’s probably more likely to be that goal scoring midfielder than the type who will create chances for others – in fact he was lower down the stats lists at Argyle when it came to keeping possession and making and completing passes.
In a midfield trio, Sarcevic will fit in nicely if Ian Evatt uses that formation – he can be defensively secure then use his movement to make those runs from deep when they’re on. It’s another decent signing for us, and a good age as well, at 28. Other signings are needed, but it’s good that Evatt seems to be slowly moving through the spine, hopefully we can look at the defence next, but in truth we’re probably casting the net far and wide in terms of looking at positions.