Welcome to Theo Robinson?

If you go down to training today you might get a bit of surprise. Just one goal in three games has prompted Danny Cowley to look into securing the services of a goal scorer. With Craig Stanley on his way, enter former Derby County striker Theo Robinson.

The news that Theo has trained with us today is incredibly exciting for anyone that knows their football. He’s an experienced striker who counts Huddersfield, Doncaster and Millwall amongst his clubs. I seem to recall Lincoln being linked with him after he served at Watford as a youth but instead he wound up at the McAlpine Stadium playing for the Terriers.

He’s still only 27 and has scored goals more or less wherever he’s played. More importantly he is a pacey player who likes to drop off a big striker and get in behind the defence. He’s very much in the Macauley Bonne mould only with much more experience at a higher level. He’s only ever played one season below League One, and that was scoring 16 goals in 52 appearances for Hereford back in 2007/08. Whilst playing for Hereford he scored against Lincoln in a 3-1 defeat for the Imps. Both him and Matt Rhead are reversing the trend of players coming back and scoring against us, choosing to do their damage before they sign!

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Theo Robinson

 

Most recently he’s been with Port Vale in League One scoring twice in 14 games, and that came on the back of a spell at Scottish Premiership side Motherwell. Whilst at Port Vale he made history by scoring their 6,000 goal in a 4-1 win over Rochdale. He was a popular figure at Vale Park which is no mean feat for a former Stoke City youth player.

We have certainly looked a little light up front since Jonny Margetts left and whilst yesterday I questioned whether loan and short term players are the way forward I think with Robinson it is different. He is a player who has played at the higher level and he isn’t coming here to break into anybody else’s first team, he’s here to fight for his career.

Robinson has recently become a Dad again and at 27 I feel he will be looking for some security, and he still has plenty to offer at a higher level to the National League. Having spoken to some Port Vale fans they said he still had a real turn of pace and a keen eye for goal and they were sorry to see him depart at the end of the season.

News of a potential new striker is something I think we’ve been expecting to hear for a while, and instead of the usual cast offs from our league like Craig Read and Nathan Blissett we’ve managed to bag someone with proper footballing pedigree. It would certainly be exciting to see him in an Imps shirt, especially after his goal in our friendly today.