Jermaine Pennant has set his sights on inspiring Tampines Rovers to the Great Eastern Yeo's S.League title after being unveiled by his new side on Tuesday.
After spending 10 days on trial with the club, the former Arsenal and Liverpool winger officially put pen to paper on a one-year deal at a signing ceremony, where Tampines presented their squad for the upcoming campaign.
Throughout the event, Pennant looked at ease and was regularly breaking into a smile, although he did turn serious when talking about what he hoped to achieve in 2016.
"So far, it looks like this is going to be a good season and long may it continue," he said. "I came here to try and help Tampines win the league and I'm certainly going to do my best.
"Now that I'm sitting here, I do feel a bit more pressure than I did before, but I've had a lot of pressure throughout by career so hopefully it'll all go well for myself and Tampines, and we win a lot of trophies and help improve the future of Singapore football.
"I have to thank my teammates for making feel welcome since I've arrived. They've been fantastic and shown me a lot of respect and I hope I've shown them a lot of respect too.
"Everybody involved with the club has been great. The country has been fantastic and the support everyone has shown has been great too."
Speculation has been rife that Pennant is now the highest-paid footballer in the history of the S.League, although Tampines refused to go into details of the financial terms both parties agreed upon.
And while Stags chairman Krishna Ramachandran stopped short of setting particular goals for coach V. Sundramoorthy and his charges, he believes they can naturally achieve much success should the team that has been assembled fulfill its potential.
"I'm going to be very clichéd by saying I've not set any targets for the players," explained Krishna.
"But they understand the club's philosophy and they know they will have to give 100 per cent.
"If you do the equation, having a set of top class players who work together as a team, then what we can achieve throughout the season is a natural by-product of all that.
"When dealing with professionals who respect their ability on the pitch and want to play for the team, they will impose their own targets for whichever tournament we play in."
Although expectations are high that Pennant will make an instant impact, especially after he weighed in with an assist in the 2-0 friendly win over Hougang United in Tampines' first pre-season friendly on Jan. 9, coach Sundram has called for patience with his big-name signing.
The former Singapore international said: "Jermaine's been training with us for about 10 days now and he will need to get used to the way we play, the rest of the team and the hot weather.
"But I was surprised when he ran the 2.4km [fitness test] and he was leading the pack, so I think fitness-wise, he's there.
"He just needs to get a bit stronger so we'll be building him up gradually, you probably won't see him playing the full 90 minutes initially.
"We'll start with 30 to 40 minutes and get him stronger as the season wears on, and hopefully we'll soon be seeing the same player we saw at Arsenal and Liverpool."
Pennant is likely to make his competitive debut for Tampines in an AFC Champions League playoff, away to India's Mohun Bagan on Jan. 27. His next trial game will be against Malaysia Premier League club, Johor Darul Ta'zim II on Wednesday.