‘Just a raw talent’ – Crawley Town boss gives verdict on former Brighton and Huddersfield youngster
New signing Omari Mrisho will give Crawley Town something they were missing last season, according to head coach Colin Kazim-Richards.
The full-back was only announced as a Crawley player on Tuesday afternoon (July 28) after impressing as a trialist in the 1-0 win at Eastleigh on Saturday (July 25).
Mrisho played the second half of the Reds’ 3-1 pre-season defeat at Oxford United on Tuesday night, with Reading up next on Friday night (July 31) at the Broadfield Stadium.
Kazim-Richards’ latest summer acquisition is only 20-years-old, and the Reds boss believes the former Brighton and Hove Albion and Huddersfield Town talent has bags of potential.
He said: “Omari is a player that has so many attributes. We need to coach him a little bit more.
“Just a raw talent that I think, for the club, will be a massive asset. He's 20 and the attributes that he has, the way he plays – he brings something a bit different to what we didn't have last year. Raw power, raw pace, with the ability to get into positions and exploit it.
“I don't know if he's been coached much, but we're going to have the time now to be able to coach him up to speed in terms of what we're looking for. But it's a profile that, for a coach, is a lovely one to have. The foundation that he's got to build on has a high ceiling.”
There’s been another mass overhaul at the club this summer with 11 coming in and 13 departing (as it stands).
And the Reds boss is pleased with how the new additions have settled in – noting one ‘really important aspect of building a team’.
He said: "The men that we've brought in and the men that we've got here – they've all bought into the mentality and the style of play that we want, and we want to be relentless when we have the ball and off the ball.
“We want to be relentless to get that ball back, to be really good on the ball again, and it does look like our team has played together for a long time.
“And in retrospect, we're going into the fourth week now, so it's really not a long time at all. I think there's so much we can build on, and we've got to do that day by day. And we've got to really, really work on it and be relentless at working on it.”
The Reds’ first competitive game of the season will be a highly charged affair when many of the first-team face their old boss Scott Lindsey for the first time since his sacking in March.
They travel to League Two new boys York City, now coached by Lindsey, in the EFL Cup preliminary round on Monday (August 3).