As the title says, that took a while         .

Having failed to get our man for £7m in the summer we now finally have the Naismith deal over the line for £8.5m

What strikes me about Naismith (and to a lesser extent our other signings) is that they are exactly what we need - a touch of quality and, going back to the Lambert days, also good professionals.  With Naismith also being a seasoned campaigner in the Premiership and adding that bit of nous and wisdom that has at times been missing this season

This was very evident with Naismith who received a glowing tribute from his former manager Roberto Martinez extolling his professionalism and how it was only fair to let him move on because he had been so good with club and manager and wasn't getting the pitch time he deserved.

For those that have not seen the interview, Martinez had the following to say:

“Steven Naismith has been a joy and a true professional"

“We really connected very quickly when I arrived at the football club and you could see that his role in the team grew instantly.

“He was very effective and created incredible memories and moments for us.

“It gets to a point where, this season, we had a lot of options going forward and the playing minutes have been a bit of a problem.

“Steven is a professional who needs to play and he feels at this moment in his career that he needs to be playing games and that’s very respected from my point of view.

“When you have the amount of options that we have in our team, we want to become a team that fights for everything that we can and that competition for places is needed.

“We got a really good value out of a very good servant, he’s leaving terrific memories and we wish him the very best in the future and in this new chapter of his career.”