By Brian Bennett

Ashington manager Nick Gray strengthened his squad last week when Charlie Aitken put pen to paper on a loan deal from Ebac Northern League side Whickham.

The newcomer came on for the final quarter hour of Ashington’s one goal defeat against Blyth Spartans on Boxing Day and Gray said: “Charlie is a lad who I’ve known since he was a junior. He has good energy and quality and he’ll give us legs. He’s new to the group and has only trained once with us and when he came on today it was in difficult circumstances.”

He continued: “I think the squad is getting really strong now – probably the strongest it’s been all season – but paper doesn’t win games of football – players do and we’ve had some of our better results when things have been down. Now we’ve got to have people who are leaders.”

Ashington go first footing to Heaton Stannington on Friday (January 2) and Gray added: “It’ll be a tough game because they are flying and are having a great season. However,  we’ve got nothing to fear. When you think you have turned a corner, football has this great habit of kicking you and for all we dug in to get a great result at Bishop Auckland, the defeat against Blyth Spartans is one of those days – but we’ve got to move on and look to start another good run.”