Danny Seaborne ready for new challenge at Derry City

The centre-back, who is available to make his competitive debut against Limerick this Friday evening. is looking forward to life at the Brandywell.

“I’m looking forward to the new challenge, the new opportunity and hopefully I’ll go straight in and play as many games as possible,” he stated.

“At the minute I’m probably lacking match fitness, but we have set up a couple of friendly games, so I’m looking forward to get full match fitness in those games.

“I was looking for something different for myself and having played in England and Scotland for a long time and experienced that, I was wanting a new challenge without moving abroad, so when I spoke to Kenny he sounded like a really good guy to work for, so I’m looking forward to the opportunity of playing for Derry City.”

The Candy Stripes have conceded 43 goals so far this season - the highest total since conceding 51 in 2003.

After the same number of games (24) that year, they had conceded 37, but the ex-Coventry City man believes there’s still a lot to play for this season and he hopes they can tighten things up at the back.

“Hopefully as a group we can try to change that and move forward to try and get up the league,” he added.

“We have got to be as tight as we possibly can and also be as offensive as we possible can, so yeah it’s a good challenge, which I’m looking forward to.”

With a Europa League clash against Dinamo Minsk coming up in a few weeks time, Seaborne feels there’s still a lot to play for as the season starts to heat up.

“There’s everything to play for still and we have a really interesting tie in Europe,” he insisted.

“Obviously the league is still very important for next season as well, so we have to try and get up as high as we possibly can in that respect.

“We are also in the (League) cup semi-final and we have a big opportunity in that, so yes we’ll be looking forward to it, but we’ll be playing it game, by game and all the old cliches, we’ll be looking to try and go as best as we can.”

After Shiels made an approach a number of weeks ago, the 31-year-old started to take a closer eye on the SSE Airtricity League Premier Division and he’s looking forward to getting his first competitive taste of action.

“I know a fair bit about the league, because I have checked things out over the last few weeks and it’s a league that I’m looking forward to playing in,” he added.

“It’s a competitive league and having spoke to one or two of the lads I know it’s going to be tough.”

Seaborne, who along with fellow new signings Dean Shiels and Ben Fisk were expected to feature in this evening’s friendly at Cliftonville, will bring some much needed competition for places, much to manager Kenny Shiels’ delight.

The City boss is also hopeful that Seaborne will not be the last of the new faces at the Brandywell, with both Ally Roy and Aaron Splaine also on Shiels’ wanted list.

In fact Roy, who’s loan move from Hearts to Sligo Rovers ended last weekend, is believed to have jetted in from Scotland over the weekend with the intent of completing a move to the Foylesiders.

“Bringing in new players provides competition for places and it gives us that extra push in our organisation of the team,” said Shiels.

“There’s not that much wrong with the players that we have, it’s the experience of the players that we have.

“It’s amazing how one or two players like Dan and Dean can make with their experience to these young players and hopefully we’ll see the fruits of that very, very quickly.

“If we can get that right then it gives us the impetus to go on and have a good finish to the season and get right up that table again, which obviously everyone wants.”