Vale of Leven have announced their first signing of the summer with Saint Anthony’s top scorer and former Vale striker Scott Arthur joining on a one-year deal.

The 28-year-old forward, who has also enjoyed spells at Neilston, Renfrew and Johnstone Burgh over the years, rejoins Vale for the third time following a successful stint at McKenna Park with the Ants last season.

Arthur netted 12 times in 20 appearances for the Glasgow club, including winners against Vale back in October and March, and that kind of form alerted boss Brian Brown who welcomed back his former striker with open arms.

The striker netted 25 times in 51 appearances for Vale over his two spells at Millburn Park.

“We’re at the stage of pre-season now where we can start to talk about signings and that side of things,” Brown told Reporter Sport. “Scott was Saint Anthony’s top goalscorer last season so it is quite a big signing for us to pull off.

“We were quite a free-scoring team last year so bringing Scott in will just add to that.

“We lost a few narrow matches last season by the odd goal. In those matches, we missed a few big chances as well so Scott being able to bring in some extra firepower and a lot of experience up top will be a major boost for us.”

Elsewhere, Brown has also promoted six youngsters from the club’s U21 set up with captain Keir Wood, Josh Degg, Danny Paterson, Lewis King, Fraser Forbes and Cameron Smith all making the step up to the first team.

Read more: Vale of Leven line up competitive pre-season schedule

Brown added: “Our under 21s finished their season last week so we’ve brought six of them up to the first team.

“That’s six new faces added to the squad right away which is great as we’re still only in May.

“Our U21s played well through the season so we were always keen to bring in some of those boys. Most of the boys we’ve brought up have already featured for us in the last few months of the season anyway.

“Four of the boys were too old for the 21s so were naturally ready to jump up and the other two we felt were ready to move up despite having a year or two left at that level.”

And, with those seven new additions, Brown has admitted that could well be it for his summer dealings, insisting that the quality he already has at his disposal will be enough to mount another push for promotion come the start of the season.

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“We weren’t a million miles away from promotion last season with the squad we had,” he said. “We were fighting for promotion right up until the final couple of weeks.

“We’ve still got a couple of those boys from last season to give extensions to, but apart from that we’ll be looking to keep roughly the same squad.

“Adding Scott is a big boost as well as the six boys from 21s who are all ready to start playing in the first team.

“We do have another couple of targets we’re looking at and keeping an eye on but I think that might be us to be honest. Whether we get them or not we’ll have to wait and see but as it stands, that should be us in terms of transfers and I’m more than happy to move forward with that.”