Peterborough United should turn to Leyton Orient for Mason-Clark replacement: View | OneFootball

Peterborough United will be left with two massive holes in their frontline this summer, with Ephron Mason-Clark and Jonson Clarke-Harris both set to leave the club.

Mason-Clark signed a deal with Championship side Coventry City at the end of the January transfer window before being loaned back to Posh for the remainder of the season, while strike partner Clarke-Harris will see his contract come to an end in June.

The former Bristol Rovers man was close to a return to the Memorial Ground last summer, and would have been turning out for the Gas this year had it not been for an admin issue preventing the deal from being completed.

The pair both look set to be leaving London Road this summer though, and Darren Ferguson’s side could do a lot worse than eying up a move for Leyton Orient’s Ruel Sotiriou.

Sotiriou catches the eye for the O’s

After coming up through the Orient youth academy, Cyprus U21 international Sotiriou has enjoyed a number of non-league loans through his teenage years; with fruitful spells at Hampton and Richmond Borough and Dover Athletic just two of the six clubs he took to the field for lower down the football pyramid.

That grounding at grassroots level only seemed to do the 23-year-old the world of good, with his proper breakthrough into the first team at Brisbane Road coming at the back end of the 2019/20 season, with five goals in his ten appearances proving his capabilities at League Two level.

A further 11 goals followed in the next campaign as the young star adapted to life as a professional, with a stretch of six goals in seven games in March helping Orient to a respectable 13th-placed finish in the fourth tier.

Nine more strikes last season helped catapult Richie Wellens’ side into the third tier for the first time in nine seasons as they claimed the League Two title, before already getting into double figures during his first stint in the third tier.

A string of impressive performances will have caught the eye of a number of clubs at the top end of the division, including recent match-winning performances in victories over Carlisle and Northampton - the latter of which saw him net two goals in the last ten minutes to secure a 4-3 win.

Few would have predicted the Londoners’ strong performance in their post-promotion season, and Sotiriou has been pivotal to that run up the table which sees them currently sitting in ninth, with his boundless energy and goal-getting instinct at the top of the field.

A look at FootyStats shows us the Cypriot is offering a return of 0.49 goal contributions per 90 in the current campaign; a return similar to Clarke-Harris’ of 0.42 from this season and 0.56 from 2022/23 if you remove penalty kicks, while Mason-Clark also hovers at the 0.54 mark without spot-kicks this year.

That is one thing you know you are guaranteed to get with Sotiriou: goals. FootyStats shows us his shot conversion rate is at 20.41%, proving just how clinical he is when he gets a sniff of goal. That sort of poachers’ instinct is something you just can’t teach; he always finds himself in the right place at the right time to bury chances.

Ruel Sotiriou contract information

The good news for Posh fans is that Sotiriou is out-of-contract in the summer, having signed a two-year-deal with his boyhood club in the summer of 2022.

That means he will be available for a free transfer in the summer, although a buying club may have to pay compensation for the striker due to him coming up through the ranks at Orient and leaving before the age of 24.

Posh have plenty of experience of signing players with non-league experience; with Ipswich Town’s Jack Taylor being brought to London Road in 2020 from Barnet, as well as the likes of Aaron McLean and Craig Mackail-Smith from yesteryear.

Sotirou has shown he can cut it at every level he has featured at so far, and there is no reason he can’t do it further up the ladder if given the opportunity to do so in the future; he thrives off of good quality service, and the better standard of player he plays with, the more chances he will get.

Pouncing on him early could be money well spent in the long run for any club, but with two key strikers departing in a few months, Peterborough’s need for a new man up top should make them eager to get a deal done sooner rather than later.

Fellow Cypriot and former O’s teammate Hector Kyprianou has already made the same move between the two clubs in the summer of 2022, and is flourishing at his new club, and that link between the two sides could be pivotal when clubs come calling in the summer.