Thomas Sandgaard outlines his key objective after Charlton confirm Scott Fraser transfer
Thomas Sandgaard has spoken to the South London Press about Charlton Athletic making it second time lucky in securing Scott Fraser.
The Addicks wanted the midfielder in the summer but the 26-year-old moved from Milton Keynes to Ipswich Town.
Fraser became Charlton’s fourth signing of the January window earlier this afternoon on a permanent deal. He had a contract with the SE7 outfit until the summer of 2025.
Sandgaard says one of his key goals is to have less of the wholesale squad changes that have happened in recent season.
Chuks Aneke re-signed for the Addicks from Birmingham City on a lengthy deal earlier in the window.
Sandgaard – asked about the arrival of Fraser – told our paper: “It’s a long-term contract and my main thing in how I want to play football is making sure our attacking midfield is as strong as it can possibly be. That is what we’re getting here.
“We’re going to keep developing him to be a super strong attacking midfielder. I believe he has the talent to go up with us to the Championship as well. I’m very excited by getting Scott.
“He was probably our number one target in the summer. We were disappointed to see him go to Ipswich. Fortunately we got the right to buy now.
“We’ve been able to strengthen our midfield with Scott Fraser and Nile John, on a loan from Tottenham. We strengthened our left wing-back situation with Juan Castillo, on loan from Chelsea. More importantly we’ve had problems scoring goals and we’ve brought Chuks Aneke back on a long-term contract as well. He’s so much stronger and holding up much better than when he left Charlton – I’ve had a chat with Chuks about what food they were feeding him up at Birmingham!
“This is part of my long-term plan, to build the core of a stable squad that we can build on. Even teams that have lower budgets than us and might not be ranking that well, we sometimes see them play right through us because the players clearly know each other better than when we try to play up from the back, for instance.
“We need to build a core of players that we can develop as a whole, not just individuals. This is part of the bigger plan to do that.”
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