RONAN Darcy’s loan move to Queen’s Park was a necessary evil, says Ian Evatt.

The Wanderers boss would have liked to keep the young midfielder closer to home, having been impressed with his progress since a spell with Norwegian club Sogndal earlier in the season.

But Evatt admits reserve team football is not currently at sufficient standard to help Darcy, or his fellow academy graduate Adam Senior, who was loaned out to Chorley.

“It was a real difficult one,” he said of the decision to send Darcy up to Scotland.

“He needed to go out and play regular football, as did Adam Senior. I keep talking about the gap between the Under-18s and the first team. It is too big, and we almost need an Under-23s team but we don’t have one at the moment.

“We felt it best that Adam and Ronan go out and play regular first team football against men and further their development, so then we can make a call on what we do with them in the summer.”

The decision to loan out striker Nathan Delfouneso was more straightforward, says Evatt, who felt the former Blackpool man had slipped too far out of first team contention.

“Obviously, we have signed a lot of players in Nathan’s position, so we felt it best that he go and play regular football and try and earn himself a contract for next season.

“He has six months left of his contract here and after that, he’ll need to impress to get something somewhere else. That’s just football.

“Obviously he has been a big part of what we have done here so far, and he was great last year. We wish him well, and we just move on.”

Evatt has also given an update on Xavier Amaechi, who has not featured for the first team since mid-December.

The on-loan Hamburg winger injured his hamstring at the turn of the New Year but will now be available for the weekend trip to Morecambe.

“He’s back training,” Evatt confirmed. “He will play in the reserves on Thursday, as will a few of them because they need games, but it’s great that we can have that headache again. It’s going to get harder and harder but that’s the way we want it.”