Eetu Vertainen has swapped a relegation battle with St Johnstone for a title chase at Linfield.
And Perth manager Callum Davidson hopes the Finnish under-21 international’s loan spell in Northern Ireland will help take his career to the next level.
Vertainen had drifted out of Davidson’s first team plans for the second half of the season after three new forwards were signed in January and Callum Hendry was recalled from Kilmarnock.
But the fact that he has decided to accept the challenge of staying in the UK and turn down the opportunity to return to his homeland has impressed the McDiarmid Park boss.
“Eetu has gone to Linfield,” said Davidson. “It’s important that he plays games.
“He’s gone to a good club who are fighting for the league, which will be a different scenario for him.
“He didn’t quite get to the speed of the game here and hopefully with four or five months in Northern Ireland, that will happen.
“I’ve obviously brought a few strikers in so he wasn’t going to get many opportunities to play.
“You’ve got to remember he’s still a young lad, early in his career.
“He’s got a lot of attributes and he wants to prove himself over here.
“He doesn’t want to go back to Finland so this was the only sensible decision – play games in either the Championship in Scotland or a good level somewhere else.
“There was a club he could have gone to back home so it says a lot about his character that he didn’t want to do that.
“Hopefully he does well and we’ll see where we are at the end of the season.”
Efe content 🙌 pic.twitter.com/OuIaNlv6wC
— Dunfermline Athletic (@officialdafc) February 6, 2022
“Efe has obviously gone to Dunfermline on loan for the rest of the season,” said Davidson.
“It was just a case of him not going to get game-time here.”
