Yesterday Sunderland announced their fourth signing of the summer transfer window (yes, fourth, and it’s not even July yet) and this time around it was Dutch centre-back Jenson Seelt. But who is he?
WHO IS HE AND HOW HAS HE BEEN GETTING ON?
Seelt was born on 23rd May 2003 in Ede, a small town in the Netherlands. He started his career with Dutch side NEC before making the move to fellow Dutch team PSV in 2017. The defender made a total of 33 appearances in the second tier of football in the Netherlands last season with PSV’s U21 team, also chipping in with four goals and one assist during that time. Standing at 6’4 and reportedly almost signing for Burnley in January, Seelt looks to be a player with a very high potential to cause Championship attackers problems.
HOW DOES HE PLAY?
One of the goals he’s scored, you may have seen it on Twitter at some point, shows him keeping pace with the rest of the attack before powerfully dispatching a shot into the goal. If that’s any indication of how he can play it demonstrates that he is a pacy player and not just a big, physical centre-back. Height is something that cost us last season, a lack of height was the reason we conceded those three goals to Luton in the play-offs and standing at 6’4 he’d definitely be able to help mitigate any threats from corners or other set pieces. As well as this he (along with the other three tall players we’ve signed so far) can help us become more of a threat from our own set pieces as well. We only scored eight goals from set pieces in the Championship last season and if we are going to launch a serious challenge for automatic promotion (like Speakman wants us to) we need to become more clinical in that area.
TWO MILLION EUROS
That’s the reported fee we have paid to complete the signing of Seelt (about £1.7 million at the time of writing) this clearly shows that both the ownership and recruitment team are being ambitious. It’s not such a high fee that it’s going to put too much expectation on the 20 year old but it’s high enough that it shows Speakman is confident this player can make an impact as soon as he joins his team mates in pre-season training. We are clearly investing in areas we lacked last season: height for this particular transfer as well as squad depth at the back, and Seelt ticks all of the boxes in what we needed last season and indeed what we need to get better at moving forward.
