Cen­tral FC has signed sev­en play­ers dur­ing the Jan­u­ary trans­fer win­dow. The lat­est ad­di­tion to the club's ros­ter de­fend­er Up­ston Ed­wards, a Ja­maican in­ter­na­tion­al who is on loan from Ja­maican club Port­more Unit­ed un­til the end of the sea­son.

The 25-year-old Ed­wards now joins last sea­son's top per­form­ers Willis Plaza, Run­dell Win­ches­ter, Ja­mal Jack, El­ton John and de­fen­sive duo, Uri­ah Bentick and Kevon Vil­laroel as play­ers to come in dur­ing the trans­fer pe­ri­od which be­gan dur­ing the first week of the year.

Cen­tral al­so wel­comes the re­turn of pre-sea­son sign­ing Michael Yaw Darko. The 24-year-old Ghana­ian at­tack­ing mid­field­er re­turns to Vranes' squad from a loan stint at Cunu­pia FC. The new ad­di­tions joins a ros­ter that al­ready in­cludes the likes of Mar­vin Oliv­er, Ataulla Guer­ra, Ja­son Mar­cano, Sean de Sil­va, Nathaniel Gar­cia, Akeem Ben­jamin, goal­keep­er Jan-Michael Williams, Kay­dion Gabriel, Dar­ren Mitchell, Jean-Luc Rochford, Dwight Quin­tero, Le­ston Paul and Eli­jah Man­ners.

But with a loaded ros­ter, Cen­tral have re­sort­ed to send­ing young tal­ents Nicholas Dil­lon, Kevon Gad­dard, Seon Thomas and Shaquille Williams on loan at St. Ann's Rangers, in an ef­fort to give the quar­tet more play­ing time than they would have re­ceived at the "Cou­va Sharks" ahead of next sea­son's Con­ca­caf Cham­pi­ons League. "We've ac­tu­al­ly built a team for Con­ca­caf," said Cen­tral FC op­er­a­tions man­ag­er Kevin Har­ri­son. "We have all in­ten­tions of qual­i­fy­ing for Con­ca­caf."

Do­mes­ti­cal­ly, Cen­tral FC (6-2-1, 20 points) con­tin­ues to lead the Dig­i­cel Pro League stand­ings, three points clear of de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons and sec­ond po­si­tioned Di­recTV W Con­nec­tion (5-2-1, 17 points), who they must face in Round Two Match Day on Fri­day from 8 pm at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um, Cou­va.

While ad­mit­ting that his new ad­di­tions should give Cen­tral an edge over oth­er teams in the DPL, Vranes re­mains on full guard, es­pe­cial­ly against Cou­va-ri­vals W Con­nec­tion.

"We should have some ad­van­tage now, not a lot, but some ad­van­tage. But there are still teams like W Con­nec­tion first­ly, and then teams like North East Stars and De­fence Force who are tough teams. We ex­pect every team will play very hard against us, which is nor­mal, so we must be very se­ri­ous about each game that we play," end­ed Vranes.

Round Two Match Day Two will kick off from 6 pm at Cou­va on Fri­day when fourth placed North East Stars (4-2-3, 14 points) and fifth placed Point Fortin Civic (3-2-4, 11 points) do bat­tle. The ac­tion will con­tin­ue on Sun­day at the very same Cou­va venue with rock-bot­tom St Ann's Rangers (0-1-8, 1 point) up against sev­enth po­si­tioned Play Whe San Juan Jabloteh (2-4-3, 10 points) from 4 pm.

Then from 6 pm, eight placed Po­lice FC (2-4-3, 10 points) and third placed De­fence Force (5-1-3, 16 points) will reignite their ri­val­ry in the bat­tle of the armed forces, while sixth placed Cale­do­nia (3-2-4, 11 points) sits out on the bye.