St Albans City have signed a former Arsenal Champions League star to help move them up the table.

Jernade Meade came off the bench in Saturday’s 1-0 win over Wealdstone after signing forms with the Clarence Park club late last week.

He made two appearances for the Gunners, including a start in the Champions League tie away to Olympiacos in December 2012.

He moved to Swansea City in 2013 before having a loan spell at his hometown club, Luton Town, last year.

More recently he has been playing for Hadley, and Gray has been following his progress ever since the Potters Bar-based club played Saints earlier this year.

He said: “I was thinking about putting a seven-day approach for him earlier this season.

“It’s well documented that we’re not blessed with massive amounts of pace but it wasn’t something which worried us too much. So we left it alone.

“But I just felt the timing was right for him. If people can remember a few years ago we had Chris Henry down here and he’s very similar.

“He’s got a great centre of gravity, small, quick, gets over the ground and he can strike a football very well.

“He’s coming back to fitness. I spoke to him earlier in the week about what he wanted to do. He’s still got a couple of clubs looking at him and obviously he wants to get back into the professional game.

“But he’s here now, he’s our player and we’ll try and get the best out of him.”

Gray was pleased with his new man’s contribution in the 25 minutes on Saturday.

He said: “He certainly didn’t do himself any injustice and I thought he brightened us up a little bit.

“He’s only small but he doesn’t mind a header, he’s quite happy putting his foot into a tackle.

“He’s a different type of player than we’ve got.”