The new owners of Carlisle United have sanctioned the club’s first signing – the much travelled Joss Emmanuel.
A right-sided attacking player 26-year-old Emmanuel has been a free agent since leaving Grimsby Town at the end of last season.
He has been training with Carlisle for a few weeks now and once the new owners, the Piatek family took over, the deal was agreed.
London-born Emmanuel came through the youth academies at West Ham and Ipswich before signing his first professional contract with the Tractor Boys.
He played 23 first team games for Ipswich between 2015-2019 but also spent time on loan with Crawley (2 games), Rotherham (31) and Shrewsbury (14) before joining Bolton for the 2019/20 season.
After 27 games he moved on to Hull City for a further 34 games before finishing last season at Grimsby where he played another 17 times.
His playing time at Hull City had been reduced after an apparent faint which he spoke about for the first time after Grimsby’s FA Cup win at Southampton.
He said that it was a clot that initially stunted his speech and he was unable to move the left side of his body and which initially had kept him out of the game. But he had trained hard and was fine again.
In fact he was said to be playing at Grimsby as well as he had done previously in the Championship, but did not agree terms for 2023/24.
Manager Paul Simpson said: “He’s a player who I’ve always liked if I’m going to be honest. I’ve watched him on numerous occasions so when I heard that he was available I asked him to come up.
“It was such a contrast to what I’ve experienced with a number of other free agents. Josh automatically said he wanted to come up and train, asked when I wanted him to come in and said he was going to drive straight up. His enthusiasm to come was a real breath of fresh air.
“He’s come in and trained well and he’s a really good personality. A contract until the end of the season gives him an opportunity to have a look at us and us an opportunity to have a look at him. If he gets to the levels I’ve seen from him previously he’ll be a fantastic addition to the group.
“He’s a positive personality and a good person, and the more of them we can get inside the football club the better. He’s a real energetic full back or wing back on that right side. With us losing Fin Back there’s obviously a gap there while we’re still waiting for Jack Ellis to get fit. He’s a good footballer and I think he’ll bring a lot of good things to the squad.”
And on any further potential signings Simpson told the club website: “We’re still looking at a couple of other options but it’s the usual difficulties we’re having problems with.
“I saw an article the other day about all the free agents we could be going for and I think there were four of them who we’ve enquired about and been told they don’t want to come down to League One.
“We have to just deal with that, but we’ll keep working and see what happens.”
