Wigan Athletic have announced the impending signing of David Perkins from Blackpool. Perkins is a 32 year old central midfield player who has just completed his second season with the Tangerines. The 5 ft 6 in Perkins is to sign a one year contract.
Perkins is from Heysham and began his career at Morecambe at the age of 18. He was to spend seven years with the Shrimps making 176 appearances in the Conference before joining League 2 Rochdale in 2007. He went on to make 58 appearances for Rochale before joining Colchester United for a six figure fee in July 2008.
In the 2009-10 season manager Aidy Boothroyd loaned Perkins out, first to Chesterfield where he made 13 appearances, then to Stockport County where he made 22. John Ward’s arrival as manager at Colchester in the summer of 2010 saw Perkins blossom and have an outstanding season, making 40 appearances and receiving the Player of the Season and Players Player of the Season awards.
After 79 appearances over three seasons at Colchester he moved to Barnsley as a free agent in the summer of 2011, rejoining his ex Rochdale manager Keith Hill. On a visit to Charlton in October 2012 he was dubbed ”Barnsley Boris” by the home fans, his blonde hair reminiscent of that of the Mayor of London. Perkins was to make 69 appearances in two and a half years playing for Barnsley in the Championship. In January 2014 he joined Blackpool on a free transfer. He made 64 appearances before being released this month.
In order to learn more about Perkins’ time at Blackpool we reached out to Phil at the AVFTT Blackpool fan site. AVFTT started out as a fanzine in 1996 and transferred to the Web in 2000. It has been going in various forms for the last 15 years and is now part of the FansNetwork group of websites.
The fan view below is also to be found on the avftt.co.uk site:
“He could do a job in League One” – probably the worst compliment anyone could pay a player who’s been plying his trade in the Championship for the last two seasons! However, that seems to have been the general consenus about David Perkins who was released by Blackpool officially yesterday and has been ‘snapped up’ by Wigan Athletic today.
When he first arrived at Bloomfield Road, many remembered him as the combative midfielder who had often been a thorn in the side when we’d played his former club Barnsley and whilst there wasn’t much around him when he arrived, it’s fair to say that in his time under Barry Ferguson he was one of the few players who could hold his head high at the end of the season. Therefore, much was expected of Perkins last season – few would say he delivered.
Maybe the biggest indictment on Perkins only full season in a tangerine shirt was that he only missed one game all season and yet only saw us win 4 games. In fact in his 64 games in a tangerine shirt he only enjoyed 7 victories – ironically one of which was against Wigan. At 5’6″, and through not fault of his own, many a game was spent chuckling as our keeper delivered a high ball in to midfield and Perkins failed to get within a foot of it! If he was a confidence player, then his confidence was shot at Blackpool. Quite often he’d do the hard work winning possession in midfield, only to give the ball straight back to the opposition. You could never question his commitment but too many times he fell short in the talent department.
At least he was one of few ‘recognisable’ players in the Blackpool team last season who you didn’t have to squint at in order to see who he was and we’ll see on at least two occasions next season if it was just the curse of the tangerine shirt which turned him in to a very average Championship player or if he excels as a League One player at Wigan.
Thanks to JJ of http://threeamigoswigan.com/ for this post.
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