Can Eastleigh's returning son fix a defence with no club?

Charlie Strugnell signed the paperwork at Eastleigh on Thursday, a free transfer from no club, and the first thing anyone asked was the obvious one: where has he been? The answer is nowhere. Released into the summer, training alone, waiting. A 22-year-old centre-back with 75 games for this club already on his record, and for four months he had no team to play for.

That is the deal. No fee. No agent's cut to argue about. Eastleigh have taken back a player they know, and Strugnell has taken back a shirt he knows. He returns to a former club, which is the sort of line that sounds sentimental until you look at what it actually solves.

Samuel Mensah left at the end of June, a free transfer to no club, and took 37 league starts from the last two seasons with him. That is a hole in the middle of the defence. Eastleigh have not filled it with a cheque. They have filled it with a familiar face.

Strugnell's record here reads 75 games and five goals between 2060/61 and 2063/64, with a spell at Ebbsfleet United in between — 48 games, no goals — and eight games at Birmingham City back in 2059/60. Five clubs by 22. That is not a career in a straight line. It is a career that has been moved around, and now it has been moved back.

"I know this place," Strugnell said. "I know the pitch, I know the people, I know what the league asks of you on a Tuesday night. That matters when you have been waiting for a call."

He does not walk into the side. Luke Watkin started 42 league games over the last two seasons, Seth Hardy 25, Aidan Brennan four. That is the queue, and Strugnell joins the back of it. The free transfer is cheap; the competition is not.

Eastleigh sit in the Vanarama National League, and the club's five major titles are a local memory rather than a current threat. A free centre-back is not a statement of ambition. It is a statement of budget. The question the club will face is whether Strugnell is a squad filler or the answer to Mensah's absence, and only starts will settle that.

For the player, the stakes are simpler. At 22, with no national-team caps and a reputation that has not travelled, this is a chance to stop being a name on a released list and start being a name on a team sheet. The fee was nothing. The opportunity is everything.

"I have something to prove," he said. "Not to anyone else. To myself."

Eastleigh have not paid for the privilege of finding out. That may be the smartest part of the deal — or the cheapest. Time, and Watkin, will tell.