Baillie impressed with Stratford Town's latest recruits

THOMAS Baillie has brought in two new faces in a bid to give Stratford Town some cutting edge in the final third.

The Town boss revealed after Saturday’s 1-0 defeat to Alvechurch he would be dipping into the transfer market to freshen things up.

The need for attacking options seemed to be evident even more so as the Blues had failed to score in their last three Evo-Stik Southern Premier Central outings.

Forward Curvin Ellis has signed from Midland League Premier Division outfit Coventry United and attacking midfielder Muhammed Sebbeh-Njie has made the move to Town from league rivals Redditch United.

Both were handed their debuts in Tuesday night’s penalty shoot-out victory over Kettering Town in the quarter-finals of the CSS League Cup and Baillie was impressed with how his latest recruits shaped up.

“I decided to take a chance on bringing Curvin in but I like to see players from lower divisions go up the ranks,” said Baillie.

“He’s a big, strong lad and could have scored but he caused a very good team all sorts of problems.

"He got into positions players have not been getting into recently and considering he hadn’t trained with us, he did very well.

“Muhammed is a very good midfielder going forward but can also break up the play of other teams.

"He did that in abundance against Kettering so it was a fantastic debut for him too.”

Baillie also confirmed he was in talks with another striker but admitted his confidence in getting the transfer over the line was not high.

Ellis and Sebbeh-Njie are expected to be in the squad for Saturday’s trip to Tamworth and Baillie sees the game as an ideal opportunity to get back on the winning trail.

“We had a disastrous result on Saturday losing so late on to Alvechurch so the Tamworth game is important for us,” he said.

“A few of the top teams are playing each other this weekend so if we can win and results go our way, we could be up to fourth in the table.

"It’s a very important game and we want to win.”

Also expected to be in the squad for Saturday is midfielder Albi Skendi and Baillie believes having his ‘driving force’ in the centre of the park back among the ranks could be pivotal in Town’s play-off chase.

“There are periods of games where you need players to drag you through a difficult run and Albi is one of those,” he said.

Baillie was also keen to point out some Town fans had over-reacted to the 1-0 defeat to Alvechurch and has told them to ‘keep the faith’.

“I felt some of the comments towards me and the players were unfair,” he added.

“It was our first home defeat since September and we’ve been in the top two or three of the form guides for the last three months - and we still are.”

While Ellis and Sebbeh-Njie have joined, there have also been some departures at Town, with Claudio Dias, Shane Benjamin, Kieron Westwood and Andre Olukanmi moving on.