https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luka_Smyth

Luka Smyth has signed for Notts County after an impressive run of form with Finnish club VPS, where he scored seven goals in his opening 14 league matches of the 2026 season.

At 22 years old his biggest strengths are:

Physical presence: At around 6ft 4in (1.93m), he gives defenders plenty to think about and is strong in the air.

Penalty-box instincts: Most of his goals come from good movement inside the box rather than spectacular long-range efforts.

Work rate: He presses defenders and is willing to battle for long balls, which can bring midfielders into play.

Could this be the piece Martin has been looking for to complete the puzzle?

Only time will tell, COYP ⚽️🤠

I was just trying to look up his stats to find out a bit about him and Sofascore have listed him as a Notts player!

I think when it's the overseas transfers they are a bit harder to keep a secret, the news about Jatta and then Traore got out a the night before Notts announced it.

Be funny if it didn't happen though... It does seem likely now but I'll still wait for the Notts official website announcement.

Confirmed

Notts website

The Finnish league is ranked 67th on Gllobalfootballrankings so about the same as EFL2.

Edited Monday at 12:003 days by Sheffield Pie

Listening to the interview and judging by the weather he must have signed last Thursday or Friday. Perhaps they like to spread out the good news on signings 🤔

The radar for last striker was a bit off, let’s hope we’ve reconfigured to the Jatta/Rodrigues levels!

I've seen lots of excitement around this signing, I'm a touch more reserved because he's only played 15 league matches in Finland so it does feel like a bit of gamble to me. Looking at his matches played, he missed the whole of the 2025 season but then this season in the 13 matches he's played (technically 14 but that was only a 10 minute appearance) he's scored 7 goas.

The global rankings is pretty interesting, just got to hope it's acurate because if we'd just signed a striker who scored 7 goals in 13 matches in League 2 we'd all be over the moon!

This will be the highest level in terms of consistent quality that he has played in, but he has a promising outlook and at 22-years-old he has time to further improve. His time in the Finnish top flight will have given him a good level of experience, no doubt he will have played against some very good players but now is the time to prove that he can be a top striker.

My son keeps telling me to watch a video of him on YouTube, but I haven't as of yet. I do know of him, as I recall the interest he had from other English clubs when I wrote on Football Manics.

He's the signing that has me the most excited, as he seems to have all the ability that Jatta had but with more refined qualities.