{"id":541352,"date":"2020-01-24T12:52:33","date_gmt":"2020-01-24T17:52:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonfootball.com\/?p=541352"},"modified":"2020-01-24T12:52:33","modified_gmt":"2020-01-24T17:52:33","slug":"gillingham-sign-john-akinde-from-lincoln-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2020\/01\/24\/gillingham-sign-john-akinde-from-lincoln-city\/","title":{"rendered":"Gillingham Sign John Akinde From Lincoln City"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Gillingham have confirmed the signing of striker<a href=\"https:\/\/fbref.com\/en\/players\/93a09a47\/John-Akinde\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"> John Akinde<\/a> from fellow League One side Lincoln City.<\/p>\n<h2>Gillingham Complete the Signing of John Akinde From Lincoln City<\/h2>\n<h3>New Opportunity<\/h3>\n<p>A move to Gillingham earns Akinde a fresh start following limited opportunities with Lincoln City during the first half of the season.<\/p>\n<p>Despite playing 26 times in total, he has earned just three starts in the League; he has five goals and three assists in all competitions so far this.<\/p>\n<p>The 30-year-old joined the Imps last season, joining from now National League side Barnet.<\/p>\n<p>During his time at the LNER Stadium, he scored 22 goals in 76 appearances.<\/p>\n<p>Akinde links up with Gillingham manager Steve Evans for the second time in his career, having previously played under Evans at Crawley Town.<\/p>\n<h3>What Was Said<\/h3>\n<p>Speaking about his new signing to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gillinghamfootballclub.com\/news\/2020\/january\/gills-sign-john-akinde\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">official Gillingham website<\/a>, manager Steve Evans said: &#8220;Give only credit to my Chairman Paul Scally and the big fella himself.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy boss has been terrier-like, but outstanding, and got a player I wanted back in the summer, but he is here now.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn fairness to John he has showed a real desire to play for me again and as a manager that is very humbling.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHis goals record needs no introduction, he makes us stronger as a group and he knows how hard he must work for the team.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI have enormous respect for Michael Appleton, Jez George\u00a0and those above at Lincoln City; we have spoken many times in the last two weeks but all of us have shown a maturity and a real level of professionalism to get this deal over the line.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe need to conclude a couple of more deals and we will be ready to face the challenges in the second half of the season.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Gillingham are currently 14th in League One and travel to Rochdale in their next game on Saturday 25 January.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Main Photo<\/p>\n<p><a id=\"bf0FkIciT4x72fydc5Xx_A\" class=\"gie-single\" style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.co.uk\/detail\/1077766888\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'bf0FkIciT4x72fydc5Xx_A',sig:'yRWprDf7Zb8uXfuUITrk2_GLhAtMszqsXO2Dqu6nhSU=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'1077766888',caption: true ,tld:'co.uk',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Gillingham have confirmed the signing of striker John Akinde from fellow League One side Lincoln City. Gillingham Complete the Signing of John Akinde From Lincoln City New Opportunity A move to Gillingham earns Akinde a fresh start following limited opportunities with Lincoln City during the first half of the season. Despite playing 26 times in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2795,"featured_media":541396,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32,34,30,28],"tags":[168,47,2883,947,136],"class_list":["post-541352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-league-football","category-league12","category-news","category-transfers","tag-efl","tag-gillingham","tag-john-akinde","tag-lincoln-city","tag-world-football"],"modified_by":"Nat Goodlad, Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2795"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=541352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541352\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/541396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=541352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=541352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=541352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}