Ruben Comes In From The Cold

DRIVING to Manchester in early December, Ruben Lameiras must have wondered where it all went wrong

- Chris Dunlavy

From playing with Harry Kane at Spurs, the 23-year-old playmaker was unwanted by Plymouth and had been consigned to hawking his wares on trial at Oldham.

“I wasn’t really in Derek Adams’ plans and he was honest about that,” recalls Lameiras, who joined the Pilgrims from Coventry in the summer.

“He told me I was free to go to Oldham, so I went up there to see how things were.

“I played a game for them on the Monday night, did OK, then next morning I got a call from Plymouth asking me to come back.”

That Saturday – to even his own surprise – Lameiras was named in Adams’ first team. The opponents? Oldham.

“Everyone was joking that I’d just been sent up to do a bit of digging,” he laughs. “To be honest, though, I think it was just that the set-up of the team hadn’t suited me.

“The manager looked at it, thought ‘I’m going to try something new – a bit more freedom, a bit more creativity’. He knew that. if he brought me in, I could provide that.”