Former Hearts star could make summer transfer as boss makes admission after striker's nightmare injury spell
The striker has Hearts, Middlesbrough, Cardiff City and more on his CV.
A former Hearts and Middlesbrough striker could make a summer transfer move - despite a memorable moment at the weekend.
There are plenty of movers and shakers in the transfer market with former Jambos amongst them. One of them could be Uche Ikpeazu, who fired home a late winner for St Johnstone in their latest Premier Sports Cup group stage match, scoring the only goal in a 1-0 away win at Inverness CT.
Saints were relegated from the Premiership last season but Ikpeazu missed almost all of the campaign with injury, having been initially signed by Craig Levein, who he worked with at Hearts. The powerful forward spent between 2018-2020 at Tynecastle before moving to Wycombe Wanderers then Middlesbrough, before a stint in Turkey with Konyaspor, and Port Vale brought him to back to UK football two years ago.
Uche Ikpeazu St Johnstone future latest
Boss Simo Valakari told The Courier: “I’m happy for big Uche. It has not been easy – he had not scored for a long time so I’m happy for him to get the winner. We still need to see his contract situation and how it is with him. He’s still working with his fitness and we’ll see how the situation is. I’ve not been playing him as much as he would have liked because we don’t know if he will be with us or not.
“That’s the situation. He knows as well. It’s up to him. I want him here but it’s up to him what he wants to do. Very early in the game, Inverness went to our goal and Toby Steward made a fantastic save that kept us in the game. That changed very much how the game could have gone. If we had gone 1-0 down after a couple of minutes, it would have been much more difficult.
“Some moments, we kind of lose our heads a little bit with new players – it’s a new team. In difficult moments we are not that strong together yet but, as I said, I see in moments it is there. “With the ball we will be much better and that’s normal. “You can’t buy this work rate, you can’t buy this attitude. We left the ego out. We knew that we needed to come here and do the ugly things right.”
What was Uche Ikpeazu’s injury?
The striker had a knee injury with several complications that meant his St Johnstone debut did not come until April this year. Ikpeazu said at the time of the nightmare scenario: “Some days you come in and think: ‘Where do I go from here?’ The club sorted me out to see Dr Iain Murray in Edinburgh and he analysed the knee, had another surgery and found what was going on. An infection was hiding in there and he sorted it out quite quickly.
“That’s five operations. If not for Dr Murray and how meticulous he was, I don’t know when I would be back. A big thank you to him. He kind of saved me. I didn’t think I’d play this season and, to be honest, I didn’t know when I’d play. And it was great the club brought in Caitlin (physio Caitlin Wright, who moved from Hamilton mid-season).
“She’s very thorough and takes her job seriously, which is important for a physio. You can’t say that about everyone. Early mornings, late afternoons. There have been a lot of hard hours. I’ve missed so much football.”