Sligo Rovers loan Jonah Ayunga from Brighton

Sligo Rovers have announced the loan signing of Brighton and Hove Albion striker Jonah Ayunga  for the 2017 season.

The 19-year-old striker began his career at local club Dorchester Town and impressed with a tally of seven goals in 31 games.

In February 2016 Brighton and Hove Albion signed the Kenyan striker on a two-and-a-half-year deal.

Ayunga has been a regular with the club’s under-23 team in the Premier League under-23 league so far this season. He also appeared in the Football League Trophy this season against Stevenage.

In August of last year, Rovers’ fifth new signing was called into a Kenyan national team squad for games against Uganda and Zambia.

Speaking to the club’s official website about the signing of Aynuga, manager Dave Robertson explained his delighted at completing his fifth new signing for 2017.

“He is a player that will bring physicality to our attacking options and also extra goal scoring. He is a centre forward that is very strong with pace and power. He is a good finisher and he has scored goals regularly. He was bought by Brighton last year after experiencing senior football with Dorchester. He scored a lot of goals than and when you do that it will attract attention. The reports of how he has been doing with Brighton have been very, very good. I am delighted to be bringing him here.”

With Rovers already having Mathew Stevens, Raff Cretaro and Mikey Place the Rovers manager is happy with the options he has up front:

“He does now give us real competition for places up front. What he also gives us is something different to our tactical capability. We will come up against different teams with different styles and to deal with that we will need a real versatility. Having competition in the squad is very important and I think we have that throughout the squad now. We will have players competing to wear the shirt every week. I am really happy with the strike force that we have got here now.”

Robertson also discussed where he currently sees his Rovers squad with just over one month to the kick-off to the 2017 season with defence being his next priority to strengthen.

“We are not far away. Our next focus will definitely be to get another defender in. We need someone to come in who will be able to provide cover in that area. We currently have five defenders in the squad so I would like to add one more. That would be enough defensively.”