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New Stoke City manager Paul Lambert has made his first signing of the January transfer window with the capture of left-back Kostas Stafylidis on loan as reported by the BBC.
The Greek defender had been playing with Bundesliga side FC Augsburg, but has moved to the Britannia Stadium on loan for the rest of the season.
This will not be the first experience of playing in England for the 24-year old, who has 21 senior international caps for Greece; he spent the 2014-2015 season on loan with Championship side Fulham, making 44 appearances for them in all competitions.
However, despite scoring 5 goals in 40 appearances for Augsburg, Stafylidis had fallen out of favour with their manager, Manuel Baum, and will welcome the opportunity to revive his career with the Potters.
Lambert told a news conference on Thursday that Stafylidis, who is in line to make his debut for Stoke at Huddersfield Town on Saturday, is “a really good left back and has lots of energy, which we need”
Stafylidis is Stoke’s third signing of the window, after the capture of Maritz Bauer from Rubin Kazan, and Moussa Niakate, from Paris FC.
Andy is an exiled English football fan living in Cyprus. He loves all sports but football is his abiding passion, and he still has dreams every now and then about scoring the winning goal in a Wembley Cup Final, even though his playing days are long gone. He follows most major leagues, across Europe at least, and has a favoured team in each. When he’s not watching, listening, reading or downloading podcasts about football, he spend his time worrying about his beloved Arsenal.