BOSS Sam Allardyce is delighted to have made his first signing of the summer.

With the season over, the Rovers manager wasted little time in adding to his squad with the capture of winger Elrio van Heerden on a free transfer from Belgium side Club Brugge, signing a two-year deal.

"We've signed a very talented young man we feel, I think it is a great addition," said Sam of the South African international.

"He's got lots of pace, lots of ability, he can play both sides of the field, wide right, wide left.

"He's been with Brugge for a year or two and had a couple of injuries which has been hiding his talents for a while, but we've monitored him over the last few months.

"His agent, who is also Benni and Aaron's agent, came to us and said here's a player, he's out of contract, he'd like to come to England and would like the chance to show off his skills, so we did a little bit more research and watched a few DVDs and decided that we would invite him in.

"He was here on Monday and flew through the tests I'm glad to say, our Premier League standard tests, and we've signed him on."

 

Excited by the capture of the young winger, Sam has however sounded a note of caution, feeling that Elrio will need time to get up to speed with the rigors of the Premier League.

"We need to build him up a little strength-wise, he's not the biggest of lads, but he has the similarities of his international team-mate Pienaar who plays at Everton and we all know how well he's done," added Sam.

"So if he settles quickly and gets stuck in to the regimes that we have, the core strength work, the flexibility, the mobility and we build him up a little bit then I'm sure he'll make an impact as the season progresses.

"I'm not envisaging it will be from the start of the season, I don't want anyone to think that come the 15th of August he's going to be right out there, although that would be a major bonus if that was the case, but I think in and around the middle of the season we should see the sort of development that we need and then we should see him use his abilities on the field from there on."

Rovers fans will be able to get their first glimpse of the new signing later this month as van Heerden is in the South Africa squad for the Confederations Cup, and Sam will also be keeping an eye on him.

"We'll obviously be out there monitoring him as well now we've signed him. Then when he gets back he's a lot of work to do to get to the Premier League level that we would want him to be."