Neal Ardley receives help from old club Cardiff City as Joel Bagan arrives on loan

Left-back to go straight into the squad to face Woking

Notts County have signed Cardiff's Joel Bagan on an initial month's loan as boss Neal Ardley moved to solve his problems at left-back.

The Magpies are currently without Zoumana Bakayogo and Damien McCrory who have picked up groin and knee injuries respectively.

Having previously been the head of Cardiff's academy, Ardley has utilised his contacts at the Championship club in order to sign Bagan, who has represented Scotland at youth level.

Bagan recently made his debut for the Bluebirds in an FA Cup tie at Reading where he won rave reviews for his performance and will go straight into the squad to face Woking at Meadow Lane tomorrow.

Ardley believes the 18-year-old will be a fine addition to the squad.

“We looked at loads of possibilities for this position, but the players we identified with know-how, experience and knowledge were either too far away in their demands or unavailable because their club can’t replace them outside the transfer window.

“That led to us looking at the best young options out there and Joel was high up on our list in that respect.

“I spoke to Neil Harris, Cardiff’s manager who’s also a friend of mine, as well as their academy manager and they both rave about Joel. They’ve told me he’s more than up for this and very capable of doing a good job for us.

“He may not yet have the experience, but we feel we’ve got a very good young player who’s educated in his decision-making and very good technically.

“He’ll be in the squad for tomorrow’s game and we’ll have time to work with him next week to give him a full understanding of how we play – and I don’t think it’ll be too dissimilar to Cardiff.

“I’m sure he’s going to do really well and at the end of the month we’ll take a look at the overall situation and decide whether both parties would like to extend the deal.”