United boss Steven Pressley confirmed today that he completely understood comments made by Newcastle United’s reserve team boss Neil Redfearn that the loan deal which brought striker Elias Sorensen to Cumbria in August.
The 20-year-old Danish forward has made nine appearances for the Blues, with his first league start coming in the 1-0 away win at Scunthorpe at the end of that month.
“I think Neil is right to say that,” he commented. “If I was Newcastle United and I was Neil Redfearn then my concern would be for the development of my young player who is out on loan, and if he’s not getting game time then fully understandably I’d be thinking that the situation would need to be reviewed.
“That would be the same for any young player who goes out on loan over a period of time and who doesn’t play on a regular basis. Newcastle’s concern has to be the development of their players but, what I must stress, is that our concern has to be the development and progress of our own team.”
“The thing is that whether he’s playing or not, the one accusation that can never be made about the situation is the way he’s been treated,” he added. “Elias has been looked after extremely well by us, and I think Newcastle know that.
“We work hard with him in the afternoons as we try to develop and improve him as a player. Now, he might not have had the game time that they and he hoped he would get, but there can certainly be no complaints about the way we’ve looked after him.
“When it comes to the game time, there’s an argument there that he hasn’t been given a clear run of games to prove himself, and I understand that. However, when you’re in the situation that we’re in and you’re looking for results, then we always pick the side that we think can win us the game.
“Unfortunately Elias hasn’t been in that side and he’s obviously disappointed with that. He hasn’t shown that, and I will say that about the kid. I spoke to him a number of times early on and he’s gone about things in a great way, and credit to him for that.”
“Again, I have to say that Newcastle know what we’re trying to do with him,” he commented. “Shola [Ameobi] worked with me at Fleetwood and the reason he was keen for Elias to come here was because he knows how hard I work with young players, and how much I want to help them develop, so that isn’t the issue for Newcastle.
“They understand that we work closely with Elias and other players, and they haven’t got a problem with that. They have a problem with his game time and I accept that. I’ll repeat again, if I was Newcastle loaning a player to Carlisle I would want more game time than he’s getting, so I have no issues with the noise that’s coming out of Newcastle about this.
“They have to look after the best interests of their own young player, but I have to look after the best interests of our football club.”
“I know that Leicester will be monitoring Ryan Loft’s situation in the same way,” he said. “He hasn’t been playing regularly either so that’s another conversation we’re going to have to have.
“We do have these situations ongoing and that’s partly the reason why I was out at a game on Wednesday night, because we have to continue to monitor potential targets just in case some of our players do get recalled.”
“Part of what we want to achieve going forward is that we need more stability in our playing staff and we need to be better in these areas,” he concluded. “We’re working hard to try to achieve that. There’ll be a budget available in January to bring in personnel, but I have to say that January is a really difficult window when it comes to getting the right players in.
“That’s definitely the case when it comes to strikers and it’s going to be a challenge for us, but we’ll work very hard in trying to do that.”
