The one player who could follow Jack Ellis out of Carlisle United in January 2025 | OneFootball

The Blues are likely to be busy in the new year again.

Carlisle United once again find themselves in a position where they may need to have a good January window in order to stay up.

Nobody would have thought at the start of this season that the Blues would end up in a similar predicament to the one they faced last time, but that's where they are.

Despite all the pre-season noise about their promotion goal, Carlisle currently find themselves in the midst of an early relegation battle. Pressure is building on head coach Mike Williamson and his players to get some results quickly, so that they aren't so reliant on January being their hopeful turning point.

Additions will be the presumptive focus of the next transfer window at Brunton Park, but there will be scope for a couple of players to leave before the end of the first month of 2025 too. These two are potential candidates to make way in the winter.

Jack Ellis

Based on his profile, Jack Ellis - a 20-year-old Carlisle academy product - should have been a prime candidate for a loan move elsewhere for some time now. But, because of how he has played when given the opportunity to play, he's earned himself one of the defensive spots in the first team.

Those chances had come semi-regularly up until the start of this season, when his game time really fell off. This season's lack of minutes has come during the tenures of both Paul Simpson and Williamson, but it's the new head coach who has really not taken to the youngster.

Against Harrogate Town and Walsall, Carlisle were without their first-choice right-wing back Archie Davies due to a shoulder injury. This position is not Ellis' natural one, but that is where he has played most of the time since entering into the first-team.

Rather than using the academy product who was the most natural fit to fill in for Davies, Williamson elected to move others out of position to accommodate, including moving left wing-back Cameron Harper over to the right and central defender Jon Mellish into Harper's position against Walsall.

The head coach just doesn't seem to rate Ellis that highly from the outside looking in. He needs minutes to continue his development, though, and if those opportunities aren't going to come then he needs to look and see if there are any temporary solutions out there for him.

Anton Dudik

The plan for Anton Dudik has always been to get him out on loan so that he could continue to progress. He's not long joined National League North side South Shields on loan, but the agreement between the northeast-based side and Carlisle is that the young Ukranian will only be with them for a month before coming back across the width of the country.

No EFL club is likely to have a look at Dudik. The non-leagues are where he's most likely to get his chances to play, as has been proven already, so there are probably not going to be any transfer window restrictions that would stop a team getting Dudik between the end of his current loan spell and the new year.

But, because of the timing of his current move away from Brunton Park, there's a chance that January could be his next best opportunity to find somewhere to play football.