Striker Connor Simpson joins Cork City

Cork City have confirmed the signing of 20-year-old striker Connor Simpson subject to international clearance.

The English born attacker, who came through the Hartlepool United academy before signing for Preston North End, was recently on loan at Accrington Stanley where he made two appearances.

He is the third striker to sign for the Rebel Army in recent time after Scott Fenwick and Kit Elliott joined last week. Like the other two strikers who came from the United Kingdom, Simpson will undergo a mandatory two-week quarantine period before joining up with the rest of the squad.

Cork boss Neale Fenn welcomed the news, saying: “We’re delighted, we’ve been chasing Connor for a while now, so it’s a great relief to get it over the line and get him in. It’s no secret that we’ve been chasing forward players, which hasn’t been easy. It was imperative that we got some firepower and some strikers on board and fortunately we’ve managed to do that.

“Sometimes you’d look at a player of Connor’s size and think maybe he’s only good in the air, but Connor is certainly very good with his feet as well, which is of great benefit to us. The three attacking players we’ve brought in have all added different dimensions to the squad and have all got their own characteristics and positive abilities, so we can’t wait to get them into the team and playing.”

Shortly after putting pen to paper on the deal, Simpson said: “Neale and I had a chat on the phone, a good chat, where he explained to me how things work over here, told me a lot about the league and what the football is like. I’ve not had the best start to my career – I’ve had a couple of loan moves, but I haven’t played many games, which is want I want to do here at Cork City. I want to play a lot of football and score a lot of goals. I’ve seen that the club isn’t in a good place in the league at the moment, and I’d like to come in and contribute with a lot of goals and assists, and hopefully get the us back to where the club should be.”

Neale Fenn also spoke about his future transfer business: “I think we’ve added what we’ve needed to the squad. It was no secret that we needed forward players, and that’s no disrespect to the lads that are here already, because we’ve got some good players, but they are young players that are untested at this level. It was important to us that we brought in a mix of different types players that could play different styles to suit each game or to suit the players that we’ve got at our disposal.”