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Ebbsfleet United manager Dennis Kutrieb may send fringe players out on loan in bid to keep squad balanced following recent influx

05:00, 10 November 2023

Manager Dennis Kutrieb admits having too many players in his squad can get messy.

The Ebbsfleet boss has boosted his ranks in recent weeks, the latest addition was left-sided defender Myles Kenlock, who spent the majority of his career at Ipswich but ended last season at Aldershot.

Defender Mustapha Olagunju is one of Ebbsfleet’s new arrivals. Picture: Ed Miller/EUFC
Defender Mustapha Olagunju is one of Ebbsfleet’s new arrivals. Picture: Ed Miller/EUFC

Kutrieb has also added on-loan Huddersfield centre-back Mustapha Olagunju and ex-Gillingham striker Dominic Samuel along with former Liverpool and Bournemouth man Jordon Ibe.

Forward Shaq Coulthirst has gone on loan to Braintree - he scored in their 4-1 National League South win over Havant last weekend - and Kutrieb hinted that more players could leave on loan.

“You need to do two things,” said Kutrieb. “You need to watch (the market) carefully and you need to make sure your squad is still balanced.

“If you have 28-29 players in the squad and you’re not playing in other FA Cup competitions anymore, you have maybe the Kent Senior Cup and FA Trophy, then not everyone will get chances to play.

“You can say that’s part of the job but if too many players are not playing then it can get kind of a mess and we don’t want to have that so we will always have our squad balanced.

“If we were to do something it would mean for me I would bring someone else out on loan or if there’s another massive injury, like we had with Jack Wakely, then we’d replace them one for one. But the situation is we always want to watch it carefully.

“The new boys are playing good but they don’t know our patterns and exactly how we want to play. That’s the difference between having three or four chances in a game or maybe having 10 chances in a game.

“We have to accept that but we’ll go this way and accept it because we need to change things in general to get better.

“There’s many players available now and it gives us headaches about who can play.”

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