The manager on Workington and trial players
United manager Greg Abbott gave us his reaction to the Workington friendly on Tuesday night and spoke about his trial players ahead of another tough Wednesday morning training session.
"I was far from pleased with the performance at Workington," he said. "I thought we were pretty ordinary overall. I know it’s pre-season and the focus is on fitness, but I thought our quality was lacking.
"It doesn't help that we played two separate teams with a lot of young players involved, but we've got to be better than that.”
"It's three weeks until the season starts now and we'll need to improve very quickly,” he added. “We'll carry on with the tough training this week and make sure we're ready for the next game against Garforth.
“There's a double-edge to that one. It's going to be a base for us on the way to away games next season, and they said they'd help us out with that if we gave them a friendly. Obviously we are more than happy to do that.”
"We've probably seen in the last few games that the depth of the squad isn't where we want it to be just yet," he admitted. "There are people who have come in and done ok, but they're probably quite a way off being involved in the first team squad on a regular basis. These types of games help us to see that sort of thing.”
And on the trial players, he said: "We're not going to take Robbie [Thomson]. He's got other options at the moment and he will go off to pursue those.
“We looked at him as a possible permanent signing but we weren't sure about him challenging Mark [Gillespie]. We'll keep looking for another goalkeeper but it will probably be a loan deal, if we can make that happen.
"Jordan [Deacey] had a dead leg which is why he didn't play. He's still training with us and he'll play at Garforth next week before we make a decision on him. Danny Grainger is training at another club now, which is fair enough, because he had to keep all of his options open.
“Danny [Emerton] and Paul [Weldon] are both enjoying themselves so we’ll continue to look at them over the next week or so.
“We've asked Lewis [Guy] to stay for a couple of weeks so we can have a proper look at him. I felt a bit sorry for him and Mark Beck in the second half because the service they were getting was poor. We didn't really get hold of it in the middle of the pitch which meant the types of runs Lewis likes to make weren't really coming off.
“As we said the other day, there is no pressure on any of them and, as long as they are enjoying their time with us, we will take our time to make our decisions.”
