Sarpong is Phoenix's very own Thierry Henry

The final piece of the puzzle will fall into place for Wellington Phoenix when Jeffrey Sarpong - the player recruited to fill the gap left by the departure of Nathan Burns - makes his debut for the club on Saturday.

Wellington Phoenix is hoping Jeffrey Sarpong can provide goals Source: Getty Images

Phoenix coach Ernie Merrick said the plan was for the Dutchman to play at least 45 minutes against Auckland City in a trial game at Westpac Stadium.

"He's ready to go now," Merrick said. "We're playing our 12th pre-season game and he'll be starting in that match and hopefully have at least half a game.

"That would then give us another two-and-a-half weeks to get him ready for the start of the season."

Wellington announced Sarpong's signing last month and he has now been with the club for almost four weeks, but Merrick has resisted playing him until he received the proper conditioning at training.

"He didn't arrive overweight or anything like that," Merrick said. "It had just been a while since he had played or done a lot of training.

"I didn't want to put him into high-intensity training straight away, so we held him back, built up his core strength and made sure he established his fundamental endurance first.

"Since he did that it's been all high-intensity stuff and he has looked really good."

Sarpong, 27, made his name as an attacking midfielder or winger and has a solid pedigree, having played for both Ajax and NEC Breda in the Dutch Eredivisie, and Real Sociedad in the Spanish La Liga.

Merrick got the best out of Burns at Wellington last season and the player's previously stalled career for Australia took off again. Burns was the leading goalscorer for Phoenix, with 13, but he left at the end of the season to join FC Tokyo.

After an extensive search for a specialist striker produced candidates, but at too high an asking price, Merrick went for Sarpong with the idea of converting him into a striker - as Arsene Wenger famously did with Thierry Henry at Arsenal to great effect.

"I'm moving Jeffrey from wing to central striker," Merrick said. "Technically, he's very good, and you can see his quality straight away.

"I mean, he played nearly every game for NEC Breda last season in the Dutch first division and he usually played 90 minutes, so he's well schooled.

"He's determined to achieve something here. He's doing the hard work and running well and I think he'll be a great acquisition, but the bottom line is he still has to perform in competition and he's replacing Nathan Burns, so it's a big ask.

"But his personality, his attitude, his skills and his blistering pace are all at the level we were after. He's mostly been a winger, a provider for others to score goals, but he has scored goals himself.

"I was watching him for the skills, his technical ability and finishing. I think he can do a good job closer in."

Merrick said Sarpong had embraced the idea of a positional switch.

"Very much so," he said. "I made it clear to Jeffrey before I signed him that we'd be moving him into a more central role and he sees that as a ready good challenge."

Wellington has been in fine form in the pre-season and recently had trial wins on the road against Western Sydney Wanderers and Sydney FC.

The score was 3-1 in both games, with forwards Blake Powell (three) and Roy Krishna (one) and playmaking midfielder Roly Bonevacia (two) scoring the goals.

"Blake has worked really hard," Merrick said. "He enjoyed scoring goals against his old club, Sydney.

"He's a 24-year-old who I think has got a lot of improvement in him. He's quick, he's technically sound, his dribbling is very good and he's always been a finisher.

"He was top goalscorer in the NSW NPL while he was there with Apia last season and I think he'll continue with the goals for us. He's doing really well."

Early in the pre-season, Merrick said one of his major aims was to improve his team's transitioning from attack to defence after too many goals were scored off the back of turnovers last season.

He said there had been improvement in that area, but that it was still a work in progress.

"We've scored 31 goals in 11 practice games so far, so nearly three a game," he said. "We're scoring well and not conceding as many as before, but while it's getting a lot better I'm still not satisfied with it. We can do better again.

"I don't think we'll be at our best until we get four or five games under our belt in the A-League, but I still think we'll be in a good position to start the competition."