New signing Tim Nilsen keen to score Derry City goals

Derry City manager Declan Devine is delighted striker Tim Nilsen has joined the club.
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The 27-year-old, who netted a brace on his Brandywell debut in Wednesday night's friendly win over Finn Harps, has joined for the 2020 season and Devine feels they have signed a terrific 'Number Nine'.

Devine, who has been tracking the Norwegian front man for a number of weeks, believes that keeping the deal under wraps until he arrived this week, played a big role in preventing other League of Ireland clubs swooping in to get his signature.

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"A lot of people would have seen him on Wednesday night, but the work was done well before that and it didn't matter how he did, because we wanted to bring him to the club," he insisted.

"He's a proven player, a proven number nine, that has played at a very high level and from our point of view as staff we think he'll only enhance the group moving forward.

"Centre-forwards are like hen's teeth at the minute, they are very difficult to get no matter what level you are at. There are absolutely none in Ireland that are at Tim's level.

"For us we had to make sure that we brought a number nine to the club that was a top level player and we are delighted today because we feel that we have done that by bringing in a top, top level player and I think moving forward Tim will be a fantastic signing for us.

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"We have been looking at Tim for about four weeks but things only started moving about 10 days ago. First of all, when these things happen, you have to find out if the willingness from the player is there. Thankfully it was. You then have to deal with different types of people in terms of trying to make the deal work and when we showed him about, he was very positive.

"We were very, very keen to get him to the football club and we had to do our business kind of quietly because if Tim Nilsen was 'out there' in terms being available I think there would have been a lot of other clubs other than Derry City also tracking his movement, so thankfully we got our business done really quickly.

"He trained with the team today and obviously he played on Wednesday night, but as I said we didn't need him to play on Wednesday. It was Tim's decision to play on Wednesday.

"He wanted to take part in half the game. It was probably more so for him to see the way that we went about our business and the style of players we have, but it was irrelevant whether his performance was of a good level, because for us it was all about getting him into the number nine jersey and thankfully he's in it now and hopefully he'll stay in it for a long time."