De­spite sit­ting 15 points clear at the top of the Dig­i­cel T&T Pro League stand­ings, Di­recTV W Con­nec­tion has still added six new faces to its ros­ter dur­ing the De­cem­ber/Jan­u­ary trans­fer win­dow in­clud­ing Suri­name's Dim­itrie Apai and Cameron­ian teenag­er, Ken­neth Men­di Nzon­teu, both 19 year-olds.

The "Savon­net­ta Boys" al­so utilised the win­dow by sign­ing the St Lu­cian quar­tet of Shanoi Shawn Evans (19), Levi Fran­cis (20), Eden Hen­der­son Charles (20) and Jamil My­ron Joseph (22), with the view of de­vel­op­ment in time for next sea­son.

Speak­ing about the sign­ing of the play­ers from as far as Africa and the wide Caribbeam, W Con­nec­tion own­er/pres­i­dent David John-Williams boast­ed that his con­tacts awe

"We look for the best tal­ent that is avail­able and we al­ready have all the good young T&T play­ers such as (Mick­aeel) Jem Gor­don, Neil Ben­jamin Jr, Alvin Jones, Jo­mol Williams, Jo­evin Jones, Daneil Cyrus and so on.

"Oth­er league clubs have al­so snapped up play­ers be­fore last Fri­day's 3 pm trans­fer dead­line, but with the main pur­pose of im­prov­ing their po­si­tions on the stand­ings, how­ev­er we are re­al­ly look­ing at (our new sign­ings) for next sea­son," said the W Con­nec­tion boss.

"We have them now so that we can de­vel­op them in prepa­ra­tion for next sea­son. They are young play­ers and there are one or two that we will use from time to time, just as we used Dim­i­tarie Apai (as a sec­ond half sub­sti­tute in last Fri­day's 2-0 win over North East Stars)."

Com­ment­ing fur­ther on his club's new sign­ings John-Williams said, "Nzon­teu (who plays mid­field) is a good pass­er of the ball. We are work­ing on his fit­ness lev­el we ex­pect good things from him.

"(As for the St Lu­cians) they have a base that we can work with. There are still ar­eas of their game that we need to work on, just as we did with (St Lu­cian) Kurt Fred­er­ick and it is clear that he is now the best left-back in the league."

The Cou­va-based club al­so wel­comed the re­turn of 24-year-old Brazil­ian goal­keep­er Muri­lo Da Cos­ta from Su­per League out­fit Club San­do.

"So we are com­mit­ted to de­vel­op­ing the play­ers tech­ni­cal­ly and tac­ti­cal­ly. And we re­spect that they will de­vel­op over time, as did (St Kitts/Nevis in­ter­na­tion­als) goal­keep­er Ju­lani Archibald and De­vaughn El­liot. We feel that they will all serve us well in the fu­ture."

W Con­nec­tion al­so utilised the win­dow to wel­come back 22-year-old winger/for­ward Shah­don Win­ches­ter be­fore the T&T in­ter­na­tion­al re­turns to Fin­land's FF Jaro, the club he served last sea­son, in March.

Win­ches­ter, a prod­uct of the Con­nec­tion youth sys­tem and a for­mer T&T youth stand­out, has al­ready re­ward­ed the "Savon­net­ta Boys" with three goals in their last two games as W Con­nec­tion, win­ners of this sea­son's Dig­i­cel Char­i­ty Shield, Toy­ota Clas­sic and T&TFA Tro­phy, con­tin­ues to dom­i­nate the league in un­de­feat­ed style and a record of 10 wins and two draws for 32 points from 12 match­es, while Point Fortin Civic FC, North East Stars and Po­lice are next with 17 points apiece.

Al­so due to head off soon is Suri­namese for­ward Ste­fano Ri­js­sel as he is set to join Ma­jor League Soc­cer (MLS) Seat­tle Sounders over the week­end to spend two weeks in the club's pre-sea­son train­ing with the hopes of se­cur­ing a con­tract.

Ri­js­sel was one of two play­ers se­lect­ed by MLS scouts from the in­au­gur­al MLS/Caribbean Com­bine in An­tigua ear­li­er this month for the MLS Su­per­Draft. The oth­er play­er is Cu­ra­cao mid­field­er Quin­ton Christi­na.

How­ev­er, the Sounders made the ear­ly move in invit­ing Ri­js­sel to their pre­sea­son train­ing.

On Sat­ur­day, W Con­nec­tion will tack­le sec­ond po­si­tioned Point Fortin Civic from 3.30 pm at the Ma­haica Oval in Point Fortin in a top of the ta­ble clash.

And al­though the "Savon­net­ta Boys" have al­ready de­feat­ed the south­ern­ers twice this sea­son, John-Williams fore­casts in­creased com­pe­ti­tion in their 12 re­main­ing match­es.

"It will be com­pet­i­tive," he said. "It's not go­ing to be easy. A lot of oth­er teams have strength­ened their ros­ters to im­prove their po­si­tions in the league stand­ings.

"We have twelve games left in our case and we see it as twelve very com­pet­i­tive match­es.

"But in foot­ball you must show a lev­el of con­fi­dence. In the first half we have done well and put our­selves in a po­si­tion that we must re­main fo­cused, con­tin­ue to work hard, re­main hum­ble and take one game one by one."

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